Starting A Vegetable Garden
There’s no doubt about it: the right plant, in the right place can lead to a healthy harvest. But it also requires good soil, water, and attention.
Select a location with full sun and easy drainage (there’s no standing water after a heavy rain). You can mix in organic matter or create raised beds for extra soil nutrients.
Did you plant your potted-up tomatoes? Based on reports from area gardeners, the Thunderbirds, Tycoon, Red Snapper, Celebrity and other recommended selections in most gardens, including in containers, have started to set fruit already. It is pretty late to try and get a crop in if it hasn’t been planted yet, but if your nursery has one of the determinate or semi-determinate selections potted up in a gallon or larger container, you still have a chance to plant and harvest a crop. Quickly put it in at least a 15-gallon container or the garden and fertilize it generously with Osmocote (container) or 19-5-9 slow-release fertilizer (garden).
The BHN 968 and Ruby Crush cherry tomatoes are especially suited for containers. Fertilize them generously with Osmocote and expect not only the crop, but the best-tasting tomato varieties you have experienced.
More Calvin Finch: Give zinnias and begonias room to bloom
Apparently, even the peppers that are planted in containers and the garden have responded to the new weather and rain and have begun to set fruit. Even though there is a positive response by peppers to the weather, there is less of a rush to get the remaining peppers planted in the garden. They are patient and will tolerate the summer heat that will be coming.
It’s time to plant eggplant and cucumber.
Camille Delbos/Art In All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
You can go ahead and plant cucumbers and eggplant. They both may show some reaction to weather extremes for a while, but the transplants are available at area nurseries, and both are capable of repairing themselves even if the temperatures continue to fluctuate for a while. Be alert to cucumber beetle damage. The black-spotted green beetles are visiting and damaging lots of flowers and new leaves. Control them with spinosad or even malathion if they are causing more damage than can be tolerated.
The main impact that the Christmas freezes had on onions was that some selections were pushed into a “going to seed mode.” In my garden, that was largely the red creole response but other varieties across the region may also have reacted the same. Harvest and use the onions showing seed pods first and let the less affected selections utilize another month to complete the production of their onions. As usual, the normally maturing varieties will have the foliage flop over when the growth phase is complete.
It appears that most of the English pea plantings were leveled by the Christmas freezes, but it was not too late in the gardening season for peas to be replanted. Keep the new plants watered and apply another fertilizer side-dressing and they should produce pods in a short time.
One of the things that really surprised me was the degree of damage that the Christmas freeze imposed on the vegetable greens in the garden. In my garden, spinach was the only planting to escape mostly unscathed, it showed minimal physical damage and also maintained a reasonable taste. A few leaf lettuce, collards, kale, cabbage and Brussels sprouts survived but not many and not with the most ideal appearance and flavor.
- Look for opportunities to contribute to the initiatives to restore the monarch populations. It is one of the few gardening backyard activities that can be performed by home gardeners and have a major effect. Grow plants that can provide a favored nectar at an ideal time; grow native milkweeds so that monarchs have a nesting site; and limit insecticide spraying to targeted, controlled situations.
- Expand support for gardening programs for youth to improve the environmental situation in the future.
- Aerate and top dress the lawn to increase the lawns ability to combat pests, survive drought and utilize fertilizer nutrients more efficiently.
- Provide water in bird baths or other containers to meet the needs to increase the pollinator support in your landscape.
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Source: expressnews.com
