HOT HOT HOT

 

from https://weather.com/  7/27/21

Dear Central Virginians,

That recent reprieve from the hot weather was great, but, sadly, it is not going to last. More days in the 90's are ahead, plus limited chance for rain.  

This is a "do what I say..." post. For a number of years, I have occasionally used soaker hoses.  But, because I was leaving a fairly newly planted vegetable garden for over 3 weeks in June (what was I thinking!??!?) I set up a series of soaker hoses on a timer and I am glad I did! For shorter vacations, I often asked kind neighbors and friends to water my garden by turning on sprinklers for a couple hours every few days.  I was never gone for long, so did not worry about the water wastage and inefficiency of this watering. I just needed a way for friends to do this easily and it was sort of ok.  And I was too lazy to set up soakers and timers. BUT I KNEW BETTER!  High, overhead sprinkling wastes up to 90% of the water to evaporation. The higher the arc of the spray and the more fine the spray, the greater the waste. Try an experiment: set up an overhead sprinkler for an hour, then dig into the soil after it turns off.  You will see that the water did not penetrate far.  This encourages shallow roots which cannot support healthy plants.

My setup is not the greatest. I have hoses that cross the brick paths between the beds, that wasted water partly reclaimed by buckets to be used later.  I need a better solution.  But my plants are lush and healthier than usual, despite the hot, dry conditions. Typically by this time of year my tomatoes have leaf spot diseases, caused by overhead watering splashing fungal spores from the soil to the leaves, but not this year so far (compost mulch helps with this, too).

I am going to find a solution to the lost water, and really set up a great system next spring!

Not a Keeper?

 I really enjoy growing garlic. I plant softneck garlic in the fall, in late September or early October and it overwinters with little sprouts, starting to grow again in the spring.  Typically, I harvest it in June when the leaves turn yellow and a "test head" looks ready (not round, but forming distinct cloves). But, this June I was on vacation when my garlic was ready.  I missed optimum harvest by over 2 weeks. What happens then? See the head of garlic pictured above? The cloves have started to separate from the head. If I waited longer, the cloves would have fallen free of the head.  Why is this a problem?  Garlic that reaches this stage has poor keeping qualities, it will spoil in my usual storage in a dark, dry cabinet layered in newspaper. 

So what to do?  Thank goodness there are alternative ways to preserve garlic. The University of California, Davis, produced this helpful document:

http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/files/251548.pdf

Following their advice, I am separating the cloves, peeling and preserving them in the fridge in dry red wine, dry white wine, and white wine vinegar.  A bonus is that you can cook with this garlic-infused wine and vinegar!  I am also peeling and freezing them, roasting and freezing them (and smearing them on crusty bread, yum!), dehydrating them and making some of my own garlic powder and garlic salt.  (One thing I am not doing is preserving garlic in oil, due to the danger of botulism). As a consequence, my kitchen smells like a garlic factory!  I will still hold some of the better-looking heads in the cupboard, but will check on and rotate them often.

Carrots Can Be STUNNING

I am not the greatest grower of carrots, but I do eat a lot of them. I've had luck with other root crops from sweet potatoes to turnips, daikon, and radishes, but carrot culture eluded me for a while. I particularly love the purple carrots pictured above. I don't know if they taste any better or more nutritious, but they certainly appeal to the botanical artist in me. 

These are called Cosmic Purple Carrots. The interior can be solid orange, yellow, or orange with a yellow core. Like most unusually colored vegetables, they don't really maintain their color after they've been cooked, but just a little. Carrots need loose and light soil that is deeply worked, but no nitrogen. Some gardeners suggest working soilless seed starting mix or perlite into the carrot bed as well as making sure the soil is not at all compacted. Too much nitrogen makes the carrots hairy and woody and they won't taste as good. Once the tiny carrot seeds are planted just below the surface, the soil must stay damp in order for the carrot seeds to sprout. A rookie mistake, which I somehow seem to make regularly, is to plant them too thickly and fail to thin them. If you don't thin your carrots, you'll have lots of teeny tiny carrots that are not worth harvesting.

It's a good idea to plant carrots in the summer and harvest them in the fall. Carrot seeds like to germinate in warm soil and are sweeter when harvested after some cooler weather. However, if you plant them in the spring and you end up with carrots with a bitter taste, you can rescue them by cooking them with salt. Though the carrot will not get incredibly sweeter, the bitter flavor will be leached out. If my spring planted carrots get this way, I will often use them in a slightly sweet Asian stir fry.

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Vacay in Maine

My posts have been a little spotty lately, because I have been on a 3-week vacation near the Schoodic Peninsula part of Acadia National Park, gorgeous!  I have people watering and checking on my garden, but expect to come home to weeds, weeds, and more weeds. 

In the interim, here is some botanical eye candy from the region!

Sweet Potatoes, my Favorite YUM!

I love sweet potatoes in all their delicious incarnations: baked, boiled, roasted wedges, pie, curry, bread, gnocchi...you name it, I have  tried it.  Last year my heart was a bit broken over the sweet potato harvest. Sweet potato vines truly sprawl all over and take up a lot of room. And they will do this even if voles have eaten half of the sweet potatoes from underneath. This is exactly what happened last year. Despite my lining the base of each garden bed with fine garden cloth, the voles found a way in. This year that bed is the tomato bed and each tomato is planted in its own individual cage, after trying to figure out how the voles got in the bed and stop them!

Because of the problem with sweet potatoes sprawling everywhere, I am trying something new this year, that is planting them in garden bags. These bags are about 25 gallons each and are filled with a combination of potting mix, coir, coffee chaff, and compost. I know people have grown white potatoes in these kinds of bags before, as well as other garden crops. I did some reading and found that it is possible to grow sweet potatoes in them, though I have no idea what the yield would be like. Stay tuned for an update when we get closer to October!

What I will Grow again Next Year...and have for a few seasons

 

Isn't she lovely? What a beauty!  I have grown a few types of bok choi/pak choi/tat soi over the years and this white-stemmed pak choi beats them all.  It is easy to grow and wonderful in stir fries.  I ordered my seed from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, located not too far from where I live in central Virginia (they are in Mineral, VA):  https://www.southernexposure.com/

The only special requirement is that pak choi is a cool-season crop. It does really well when planted in early spring.  You cannot grow it in the summer, it bolts too quickly.  Like all brassicas, it can suffer from cabbage white caterpillars, which munch on the leaves. If this is a problem for you, grow them under a light weight row cover.

Tomatoes and Blossom-End Rot: Is Lack of Calcium the Culprit?

 

Photo from:

https://www.canr.msu.edu/resources/blossom_end_rot_tip_sheet#:~:text=Blossom%2Dend%20rot%20is%20caused,the%20tissue%20of%20the%20tomato.&text=Since%20calcium%20is%20only%20moved,affected%20by%20a%20calcium%20deficiency.

I am writing this to correct a mistake I made on this blog years go...and in my garden for decades.  For years, I have read than blossom-end rot on tomatoes is due to a lack of calcium.  You know blossom-end rot (see photo above). The fruit rots from the blossom up and is ruined. Each year, I added crushed eggshells, calcium carbonate, even a calcium-based antacid to my tomato planting holes to prevent it. But, you know what?  Calcium does play a role, but most soils have enough calcium to support tomatoes. It is inconsistent watering that creates problems for the transfer of calcium into the tomato plant.  So all those calcium supplements were useless to stop blossom-end rot, though eggshells certainly don't hurt anything. Make sure your watering is consistent.  And, don't water after a heavy rain. Tomatoes are not good at regulating water flow, and too much water will cause ripening fruit to crack!

I STAND CORRECTED.

Reference:

https://mgnv.org/2018/07/16/garden-myth-busters-eggshells-blossom-end-rot/