The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

July 11, 2017

Cucumber seeds fail to come up

Filed under: Insects,Vegetables — bob @ 8:17 am

A couple of gardeners I know asked me why their cucumbers didn’t come up this year. Others have mentioned that their beans didn’t come up either. Was there something wrong with the seeds this year?

After inspecting a few gardens, it became apparent to me what was going on. In each case, there was a heavy infestation of striped cucumber beetles. They are voracious feeders and are always on the lookout for their preferred food, cucumber vines and related plants such as melons and other vine crops.

In those gardens, the beetles ate every plant they could find that tasted like a cucumber. The sprouts just emerging from the soil were particularly vulnerable which is why it appeared that the cucumbers didn’t come up — they ate every last bit of the tiny cucumber sprouts before the gardener knew what happened. And larger, young transplanted cucumber plants were well on their way of disappearing down the gullets of the beetles. When the vine crops were all gone, they moved over to the bean sprouts and ate those down to the ground. Even older bean plants had lots of holes in their leaves from the beetles.

Striped cucumber beetle.

Striped cucumber beetles are about a quarter of an inch long. They have bright yellow bodies with distinct black stripes running the length of their wings.

This was just the first wave of cucumber beetles, we can expect one or two more generations of beetles to show up later this season. This generation of beetles will lay its eggs at the base of the plants in the garden. Later they will hatch, feed on plant roots for a while then pupate and emerge as adults later in the season. The next generation of beetles will feed on the underside of the leaves and even chew gouges in the fruits.

Even more important, cucumber beetles carry and will spread bacterial wilt, a serious disease of vine crops. Infected plants wilt and never recover. There is no cure for bacterial wilt once it infects a plant. It’s very disheartening to see your cucumber vines grow and begin to flower only to lose them to wilt. So it’s a good idea take care of cucumber beetles as soon as you find them. Hand picking doesn’t work because they can get away too fast. Instead, apply an insecticide labeled for cucumber beetles, most garden insecticides are effective against them.

Bob

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June 28, 2017

Buckwheat controls weeds and helps honey bees

Filed under: Cover crops,Grain — Tags: bees and buckwheat, buckwheat seeds, honey — bob @ 6:23 am

I have an area in the garden that I will not be able to plant this year. Instead of letting it stay fallow and grow weeds, I planted buckwheat. It’s something I’ve done through the years whenever I’ve been unable to use an area for one reason or another.

Buckwheat is a fast growing plant that will out compete most weeds. Planting buckwheat allows me to place-hold that unused garden area while reducing weeds at the same time. It also takes up mineral nutrients from that soil that are unavailable to other plants. Those minerals are incorporated into the growing plant. Eventually, I’ll cut down the buckwheat and till it into the soil. As it decomposes, all those minerals will be released back into the soil in a form that other plants can use.

Buckwheat is not an actual wheat at all. Wheat is a type of cultivated grass, buckwheat on the other hand, is a broad-leaf plant. While regular wheat forms inconspicuous flowers that are hidden, buckwheat grows a profusion of while flowers. Those flowers are very attractive to honeybees and other pollinators. The dark, strong flavored honey that results from buckwheat nectar is highly prized by some honey aficionados.

Many years ago when I first started beekeeping, that dark buckwheat honey was considered a low quality product. Now that has all changed and buckwheat honey is often sold at a premium.

Buckwheat seeds have a distinctive pyramid shape.

Planting buckwheat is a simple process. Till the spot you’re planting, spread some seed over the area and lightly rake it into the soil. Figure on using a couple pounds of seed per thousand square feet. In a few days you’ll see the young buckwheat plants emerge from the soil. If after a week or so of growing, some of your planting looks a little thin, sow more seed to fill in the area. Buckwheat can cover a space up to ten inches in diameter but an open spot larger that a foot across will allow weeds to grow.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress the buckwheat makes through the growing season.

Bob

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June 18, 2017

Pruning milkweeds to attract monarch butterflies

Filed under: Insects,Other Organisms,Weeds — Tags: cut milkweed, milkweed, milkweed leaves, monarchs, new milkweed leaves, prune milkweed — bob @ 6:23 am

I saw my first Monarch butterfly several days ago. I know they were here much earlier because I found a caterpillar on my milkweed plants. That means there had to be a female butterfly around before that.

It didn’t take long for this caterpillar to disappear into a chrysalis.

It takes around four days for a Monarch egg to hatch. The caterpillar stage lasts around a week and a half to two weeks. Since my caterpillar was almost fully grown, the female Monarch that laid his eggs arrived nearly two weeks ago. How did she sneak into the yard without me seeing her?

Most of my milkweed plants are on the verge of blooming. The plants are maturing and the leaves and stems are beginning to stiffen and get tougher in order to hold up the flowers and seed pods. Although female Monarchs will lay eggs on any milkweed, they prefer the more tender leaves toward the top of the plant.

Make your cut just above a set of leaves to stimulate secondary leaf buds to grow.

A gardener I know suggested that I cut back my some of my milkweed plants to stimulate new growth and leaves. Theoretically, those new leaves would make my plants more attractive to the butteries than others in the area. I just snipped off the plant just above the existing leaves. That caused some milkweed sap to ooze out of the cut. That sap is poisonous and irritating so make sure you don’t in your eye.

This is the first time I’ve tried this with milkweeds. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Bob

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June 15, 2017

Allow plenty of room for tomatoes to grow

Filed under: Garden Preparation,Vegetables — Tags: distance, tomato planting — bob @ 6:10 am

“You planted your tomatoes too close together.” Have you heard that from visitors to your garden? Not leaving enough space between tomato plants is one of the most common gardening mistakes. The good news is that it’s probably not too late to move them if you do it right away.

It’s so easy to look at those small tomato plants and forget how big they will get during the summer. Even after all these years of gardening I still have to resist the urge to plant them too close together.

Large commercial farmers who grow tomatoes for canning plant their tomatoes very close together. We often see them in double rows about 18 inches apart with the plants very close together in the row. The double rows are then spaced around four feet apart. Planting them like that allows farmers to get the maximum production from their land. Special varieties have been developed to allow them to be planted so densely. Those varieties also account for the difference in taste between tomato products. It’s why one brand of ketchup tastes different from another.

Home garden varieties won’t grow and produce well if grown too close together. Older heirloom varieties will take up much more space than more modern varieties. They’ll keep growing all season long and can get pretty big by the time the first tomato is ready to be picked. That type of growth is referred to as being indeterminate. I plant those varieties about four apart in cages and up to six feet apart if I let them sprawl over the ground without any support.

These tomato plants look like they are far apart but eventually they will together.

Plant breeders have developed tomato plants that will stop growing once they reach a certain size for their variety. Those are referred to as determinate, we used to call them “bush tomatoes”. Determinate types of tomatoes can be planted closer together, around three feet apart in cages.

Good air circulation reduces disease problems and adequate sunlight allows the fruit to grow and develop. I remember hearing a saying many years ago that went something like: “Plenty of air and light, grows tomatoes right”. Giving your tomatoes enough room to grow will provided them with the air and sunlight they need to thrive.

Bob

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June 4, 2017

Harvesting wild edible from the garden

Filed under: Weeds — Tags: eat lambsquarters, edible garden weed, edible weeds, edible wild plant, lambsquarters edible, lambsquarters raw — bob @ 5:48 am

Although the temperatures were fine during mid-May, some untimely rain and prior commitments caused me to fall behind in the garden. Memorial Day weekend was when I was supposed to get caught up but a late season bout with the flu keep me off my feet all holiday weekend and into the next week. Now I’m really behind the eight-ball.

That didn’t stop the weeds from growing, they happily grew while my veggies and flower transplants patiently sat in their flats waiting for me to get them into the ground. One of my lushest weeds right now is lambsquarters. The pure stands coming up in my beds make it look like I purposely planted them there as a crop.

I didn’t plant them but I sure am using them as if I did. Lambsquarters are the most nutritious plant that grows in the garden. It makes the “super-food” kale look like junk food by comparison. Well maybe not junk food, but it is much more dense in most minerals and vitamins on a gram per gram basis than kale. A serving of lambsquarters has more minerals, by far, than a serving of kale. But to be fair, kale has more vitamin C than lambsquarters.

If you like the textures and tastes of a wide variety of salad greens, you’ll enjoy lambsquarters. It sort of reminds me of chard but it has its own texture and taste profile.

Raw lambsquarters has a small amount of oxalic acid but so does kale, spinach, all berries and many other foods including chocolate.

This morning for breakfast I made myself a frittata with lambsquarters and feta cheese. The blueish green leaves turned a bright green after a few seconds of steaming. When added to my deep-yellow, free-range eggs it made an appetizing color combination. The feta cheese added a tasty balance to the earthy flavor of the lambsquarters. It’s my favorite breakfast ingredient this time of year, right behind bacon, sausage and hash browns.

I’ve written about lambsquarters before and will probably will do so again but that is because such a gift from the garden shouldn’t be over-looked just because it is a weed.

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security though. It is still a weed, a very aggressive weed that’s easy to control when it’s small but can quickly get out of hand if you let it. In a couple of weeks you’ll be wishing you didn’t save that patch to use as a salad green. Get rid of it as it appears and don’t worry, more will sprout up through the season.

Bob

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