Shock and Awe Gardening

The weeds started invading this week. We had a couple of very wet weeks and now it's warmed up and I've got thousands of small weeds everywhere. I could have kept up with the hoeing and I wouldn't be facing this problem but I don't have a garden so I can do work. It's even gotten beyond what I can manage with the Giant-Magic-Marker-o-Death.

check out the weeds around the broccoli

So last night, I sprayed everything that isn't a garden plant with Roundup herbicide. I was careful not to spray anything I wanted to keep alive, but there may have been some collateral damage. That's the sad reality of war. I learned the hard truth of war a long time ago, sitting on my couch watching war movies. War is not pretty. I won't know the casualty count for a few days but at least the weeds are going to be dead.

It's hard to tell what's a
weed and what's a spring green

The strawberries are still going strong. We've had strawberry shortcake, strawberry milkshakes, strawberry ice cream, and plain strawberries. I pick a few every morning on my way to the car and a few when I get home from work on my walk to the house. I figured out what's eating them on the vine, I've seen several birds helping themselves but they have only done a small bit of damage so far and If I kill a few there will always be more to take their place so for the time being, the birds get a pass.

My few blackberry bushes have been in full flower for a couple of weeks. I think there will be a good crop of blackberries when they come on.

a blackberry bush (hard to see because of
all the weeds... they'll all be dead
in a few days though.)

Something's been taking nips out of my peaches. Several had small holes weeping sap last night where some bug must have bitten through the skin. I have no idea what did this but I knew I had to take decisive action. I carefully mixed a cocktail of malathion, benefrin, and imadicloprid. The only approach that works when dealing with garden terrorists is my "kill em' fast, kill em' hard, and kill em' all" approach to gardening.

bugs that mess with me wish they were dead.

There was no more insect damage this morning so whatever it was, it isn't anymore.

wounded peaches recovering comfortably at home

Jetting in a Trellis

It's a 3 day weekend and one of the few weekends we've had lately without a full schedule. I've had time today to play outside. I got some spraying done this morning. Roundup to kill weeds everywhere I don't want weeds. I sprayed a mix of pytherin insecticide and daconil fungicide on just about everything this morning to keep fungus and insects from getting all my tree fruits and grapes. I sprayed some of my fruits with imadicloprid, remember that stuff?

I did some minor plumbing this afternoon and added a hose faucet to the irrigation pipe near the strawberries. This will let me hook up a hose at the far end of all my plantings to water a patch of watermelons I put in next to the strawberries.

The cucumbers plants I transplanted to the garden a couple of days ago need a trellis. Cucumbers vines cover a lot of ground. I don't have that much area in my garden. Last year, I tried to grow the cucumbers on a trellis and in tomato cages but I put up the trellis and cages after the vines were already out of control and it didn't work very well. This year I'm starting with the trellis earlier. The trellis is a couple of posts stuck in the ground and I'm going to tie some string between them to give the vines something to climb. Driving the posts in the ground is always work. Not liking work, I came up with another garden innovation.

One method of driving pilings into the ground when doing construction of piers and marinas is to use a jet of water to bore a hole in the sand as you drive the piling. If it works for them, it should work for me. My home built jet is nothing more than a piece of 1/2" plastic pipe and a fitting on one end to attach to a garden hose.

using a water jet to drive a post

with the water on, I was able to easily push the jet pipe nearly 3' into the ground in under a minute. Dirt ahead of the water jet washed up, around the pipe to the surface. Once I had the hole, I started to work the post into the hole using the jet pipe to clear a bigger hole. With almost no work at all, I was able to "Drive" two posts two feet deep in under 5 minutes. Another garden innovation brought to you by GardenerX.

the water jet in action

And finally, my strawberries are starting to get ripe. We've had a strawberry or two every day for a week but today was the first day there was enough to do something with. We probably picked two quarts of strawberries today and there are many, many more to ripen over the couple of weeks. A lot of the ripe ones were a little fuzzy or had soft spots. We've had a lot of rain lately and fruit sitting in water gets fungus but there were still a lot of good ones. I'm planning on having strawberry shortcake tonight with dinner.

the first strawberries of the season

Upside Down Tomato

I've read about this and decided to give it a try. I picked up a patio cherry tomato plant this morning and a hanging basket. I drilled a 1-1/4" hole in the bottom of the hanging basket with a hole saw and made my own hanger for it since the one that came with it was nearly 18" long.




I then planted the tomato upside down in the basket so it's sticking out the bottom of the pot. This is supposed to grow normally, just upside down and produce tomatoes like any other plant.

I'm not exactly sure what "patio" tomato means but this one is determinate, which means it will grow to a certain size and stop growing. Most garden tomatoes are indeterminate and they will continue to get bigger as long as the weather is good. It seemed like a determinate tomato plant makes more sense growing in a hanging basket.

Another garden experiment brought to you by GardenerX

I can win the battle, can I win the war?

We were chased from the garden last Sunday evening by a thunderstorm with several rows left to plant. The live plants survived the week in my dark shop and I got some planting done tonight. I finished up the corn and now have three rows. I may plant another couple of rows in a few weeks to extend the harvest. I always plan on doing that and get tired of gardening by then. Maybe blogging will keep me going just so I don't look like the quitter I am.

Half a row of dill and half a row of cucumbers finished up tonight's planting. The dill was planted from seed...tiny, paper thin, impossible to manage seed. The instructions on the pack said to plant 2" apart and thin to 6". The row is more of a continuum of seed than individual seeds. In fact, the wind picked up slightly while I was trying to get some of the extra seeds back in the packet and now my garden is a continuum of dill seeds.

I bought the cucumber plants last week. 4 pickling cucumbers and 4 "tasty green" cucumbers. cucumbers take up a lot of room on spreading vines that take over the garden. Last year I tried growing the vines on a trellis, I'm going to see if I can improve on that this year and grow them up instead of out.

I canned a few jars of pickles last year. The bread and butter pickles were pretty good. The regular dill pickles came out way too salty.

There's still more I plan to plant this weekend so I'll probably have another blog soon.

COLORADO POTATO BEETLE AND HOW I WON A BATTLE
My wife found a Colorado potato beetle walking through the garden tonight. These things are the worst. They eat potato, tomato, and other plants down to the ground some years and they've developed resistance to just about every pesticide there is. The home owner remedy is to spray B.t. or Bacillus thuringiensis, a bio-pesticide based on the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. Even that only works if ingested by the beetle and only when it's in the larval stage. Not really much help when a thousand beetles are chomping on your garden.

Colorado Potato Beetle.
AKA Potato Bug

Always looking for a better way, I came up with something last year that worked against the Colorado Potato Beetle. Before I share, I want to let you know that according to the pesticide label, "It is against federal law to use any product in a manner that is inconsistent with its labeling." And I always respect federal law, even the really really stupid ones. So consider the following a fictitious story.

There is a fairly new (not much more than a decade old) pesticide that Potato Bugs aren't resistant too yet. Yes, that's what we call them...potato bugs. This new chemical is sold under a couple of different names. One that's used for the Potato Bug is Admire. Admire is sold only to licensed commercial growers and is only sold in quantities that would be ridiculous for a guy with a garden to own. But the same chemical ingredient (imidacloprid) is sold in garden centers under the name "Bayer advanced Tree and Shrub Insect Control".

And yes, that's the same Bayer that makes aspirin. It seems that chemical companies are chemical companies and when you discover one that makes you better, you market it as a medicine. When you discover one that kills stuff, you just market it as a pesticide.

Although the chemical is the same, the concentrations of the Bayer Tree and Shrub pesticide and Admire are very different so I had to do some math and mix the stuff with water to get the concentration right. Converting Admire's listed "active ingredients per acre" rate to the little 18 inch circle I'm spraying around a plant took some figuring and I'll have to do the math again this year but I ended up with such a small amount of chemical needed that I mixed it with an eye dropper. But this stuff worked well and worked immediately. I had dead potato bugs within hours.

There's more good news. This chemical isn't just for potatoes. The same chemical is also sold for use on lots of fruits and vegetables under the name Provado. With a little more math, I was able to figure out the right mix and protect just about everything in my garden last year. Last year was the first time I actually let my garden grow all season. Every year before that, I gave up and just mowed it down my mid-summer because of all the damage done by insects, weeds, and disease. But I've mostly tackled the insect problem.

And the best part is Imidacloprid is systemic. It's drawn into the plant through the roots and gets into the entire plant making the entire plant poisonous to bugs so once it's applied it works for a long long time.

Now I just need to find out a way to kill whatever's eating my strawberries.

The strawberry patch massacre.

Finally past the frost free date

Saturday was busy but Sunday was planting day. I've been waiting for May 15th for a long time. May 15th is our "Frost Free" date, supposedly the last day frost can happen. We actually haven't had a frost for a month or so.

I picked up a flat of plants. Two six-packs of green bell pepper plants, two six-packs of yellow bell pepper plants, two varieties of cucumbers for canning pickles, half a dozen regular tomatoes and half a dozen grape tomatoes, and 4 watermelon plants.




I've never seen chocolate peppers before and I like trying odd-ball stuff so I had to get them. Last year I had 4 tomato plants and we had 30X more tomatoes than we could use or give away. I only really want two plants this year but they come in packs of 4 or 6. To get two different varieties, I ended up with more than I can use.

It's looking like I'm going to run out of room in my garden. I've only planted just under half the space so far but I've got big plans, so I need to save space. I planted the peppers and tomatoes between the rows of lettuce, spinach, peas, and other greens. Since the leafy vegetables and peas will be done before the weather gets really warm, and tomatoes and peppers are subtropical plants that really take off in the heat of summer, I'm hoping the leafy stuff will be gone just as the tomatoes and peppers start to take over the space. Another garden experiment.




After planting a row of a dozen peppers and 5 tomatoes, my 8 year old daughter and I marked out, raked smooth, trenched, planted, and covered a row of silver queen sweet corn. I plan on doing 4 rows of corn. We were starting to mark out the second row when a storm blew up. We grabbed everything and ran for the shop. So now I've got a flat of cucumbers, watermelon, and the extra peppers and tomatoes sitting in the shop waiting to be planted.

Thinning Fruit

After last week's warm up, it got cold again this weekend. It also rained...a lot. My rain gauge showed 3-1/2" of rain. The wind blew over several trees in the area and knocked out our electricity for a few hours Sunday night into Monday morning. No damage to the garden other than a few broken branches on the fruit trees and some of the asparagus is now growing with a slight tilt.

The peach, pear, and apple trees all have lots of fruit. Too much fruit. If the trees were allowed to grow that much fruit, the tree couldn't keep up. The fruit would be small and not very good to eat. Fruit trees need to be thinned to produce big, juicy apples, pears, and peaches.

peaches too close on the branch

The rule of thumb is to have one peach about every 6 inches on a branch. That means most of the fruit has to come off. It took me about 45 minutes to thin two peaches and two pears. I'll work on the apples on another day.

Thinned Peaches

Apples and pears grow fruit in clusters. To thin apples or pears, you leave the biggest fruit in any cluster and remove the rest. The picture is apples. Peaches look exactly the same, just a little more green.

Commercial growers thin fruit in different ways. Most thin flowers since they come off easier than fruit. Fruit tends to hold on for dear life. Flowers are weak. There are big machines that smack the trees with ropes to knock off some of the flowers. I saw one of these in action breaking branches and damaging trees. There are chemicals that will cause flowers to fall off. By being very careful how much you spray, you can only kill a percentage of the flowers. You don't want to mix too much. And some thin flowers by hand, often with toilet brushes. I was worried that frost might get some of my flowers so I waited until there was fruit to thin.

The garden greens are starting to really take off. I planted spinach, lettuce, mixed greens, radishes, carrots, and probably other stuff. I wrote the names in marker on plastic row marker stakes and stuck them in the rows. Apparently I didn't use a permanent marker and now I'm not sure what's growing where. No problem I didn't plan on eating anything green anyway.

garden greens

My wife's seen a groundhog hanging around the garden. It must be eying up the leafy stuff because there isn't anything else to eat yet. Last year she watched him steel tomatoes.

And finally, I've got red strawberries. Most of the berries look like the tiny green ones at the top of this picture but I found two that are getting red. I think I'll have strawberries next week. Finally something from the garden I like.

a lonely red strawberry

Getting Hot

It's finally getting warm. For the last week, it's been in the 70's and even hit the low 80's a couple of times. After a month of slow progress, these warm temperatures have gotten things jumping in the garden.

I've been doing my regular weeding with a 1 gallon sprayer and roundup. The Giant-Magic-Marker-O-Death has seen some use too. With the the magic of chemistry and some warm weather, I've got nice dead patches around just about everything now.

Over last weekend we planted a couple of my odd ball seeds. A row of sugar sorghum and a row of peanuts. Sugar cane grows in tropical areas only so in the old days, northerners like me, used sugar sorghum as a sweetener. Sorghum is still grown as a grain and the stalks are used for animal fodder but no body really grows the sweet varieties anymore. I found a source on the internet. I tried sugar sorghum last year but killed it when I was "hoeing" my garden with herbicide. I should have know better since I learned as a little boy not to spray into the wind.

oddities: peanuts and sorghum

Peanuts are only an oddity because they're grown down south and not in New Jersey. Our growing season is too short and too cold. I was hoping to start these under plastic to get an earlier start but never got around to it. Maybe I'll get peanuts anyway. Probably not.

Since I only put in my rows of asparagus last spring, I didn't want to harvest too hard this year. We cut asparagus a couple of times and then let it grow. It's getting pretty big already. We can cut as much as we want next year but I can't imagine wanting to cut very much.

asparagus gone wild

I bought three more blackberry plants at Lowe's this year. Since they sit on shelves indoors in plastic bags and never get watered, I figured they wouldn't be in very good shape for very long so I picked them up a month ago, as soon as they hit the shelves. There were no leaves but the little sticks had some green inside so I thought they would be okay.

The sticks turned out to be dead. But two of the three are putting out new leaves from the roots. If you want quality, buy from somewhere other than a home center.

back from the dead.

The grapes are starting to flower. Grape flowers don't look like much, they're easy to miss. But each of these flower clusters will become a bunch of grapes.

grape clusters

For the last couple of years, my pear trees have done nothing. This year they flowered like crazy and now I've got pears. I'm not sure if you pick pears under-ripe to ripen on the shelf or let them ripen on the tree. Either way, I'm going to give these a little time.

pears

And finally, I've even got strawberries. My Giant-Magic-Marker-O-Death is working very well at keeping weeds to a minimum in my strawberries and I've actually got berries. I'm not a fan of vegetables. The stuff that I'll grow in the actual garden, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, peas, broccoli, peppers, and the other vegetables can feed everybody else. The fruits are mine.

strawberries

That's enough for one post. Radishes, lettuce, spinach, peas, onions, broccoli, and other stuff is really starting to take off but I've typed enough and you've read enough.