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Mid-Summer in the Vegetable Garden
Romanesco Zucchini
Summer squash of all sorts are ripening up nicely, so I know it’s mid-summer in the vegetable garden. Soon gardeners will be dropping off bags of squash in unlocked cars, on porches, and, occasionally, on seats of buses and in public libraries. When you’re not distributing the booty in creative ways, here are some suggestions for tasks in your vegetable garden now.
If you see lower leaves of tomato plants browning up, snip them off with a sharp pair of scissors and dispose of them in your trash, not the compost. It’s a good year for tomatoes, so far. No late blight, not much early blight for most of us. On a recent tour of my 32 tomato plants, I only found a few that had any discolored leaves at all. This may be due to the fact that when I installed tomato cages in June, I cut off lower leaves that might touch the ground. Most leaf diseases are soil-borne and spread by splash-up. So removing lower leaves, even now, is a good practice. Mulching with leaves, straw, hay, pine needles or grass clippings helps prevent disease, too.
I’m eating edible-pod peas and freezing some for the winter. I blanch them briefly – about 60 seconds- and drop them into cold water before patting them dry on cotton towels, and then freezing them in zipper bags. Once the crop is finished I’ll have a nice 10-foot section of wide raised garden bed for planting late season veggies. Here are some possibilities of ways to use that bed:
1. Fall radishes. I buy seeds for one called ‘Red Meat’ in the Johnny’s Seeds catalog that I love. It only works if you plant it in mid-to late-summer. It is very mild, and pretty on a plate. Pink centers are surrounded with a band of white, then green – just like a watermelon. It is tasty even if grown 3 to 4 inches in diameter. I serve it with a vinaigrette sauce. At the Cornish General Store I found seeds by Agway for a fall radish called Chinese White Winter; the packet says to plant after August 15. It grows to 5 inches long or more, stores well, and is mild. I shall try it.
Broccoli Starts
2. Late season broccoli. Start some by seed now in cell packs, transplant into the garden when they are 2-3 inches tall. You’ll have full sized heads in 55-65 days. Or buy seedlings now if you can find them. Broccoli produces well into the fall as it is very frost hardy.
3. Bush Beans. I have 2 plantings already, but I could do a third planting for the freezer. ‘Provider’, a reliable variety, takes just 50 days from planting to harvest, and will produce for 3 weeks or more. If you plant today, you should be able to harvest plenty before frost.
4. Lettuce. Fall lettuce is crisp and tasty. Plant directly in the soil, or if you have no space now, plant in cell-packs, and plant when you have space.
Other tasks now? Scratch in a little rock powder or wood ashes around pepper plants. Peppers produce late in the summer, and can be stimulated to be more fruitful, sooner, with a dose of rock powder now – a quarter cup per plant. For more information on rock powders, see my latest book (Organic Gardening (not just) in the Northeast: A Hands-On, Month-by-Month Guide), which should be available at your local library or bookstore. Azomite is the name of one commercially available rock powder.
Your asparagus patch should not be ignored, just because the season is over. Make sure grasses and weeds don’t take over the bed, and water weekly in dry times. I mulched mine with ground branches I got from a local arborist. The chips keep down weeds and hold in moisture.
Make pesto. Basil is more productive if you keep picking leaves or even cutting off the top third of the plant. There is only so much basil you can put in a salad or on a sandwich, so make some pesto and freeze it for the winter when we all crave green things from the garden. The basic recipe contains basil, garlic (lots), parmesan cheese, olive oil and pine nuts. In recent years, pine nut prices have peaked over $20/pound, so I have been using walnuts or hazel nuts, both of which taste just fine.
Garlic Scapes
My garlic is getting mature earlier than usual this year. When the tops, called scapes, curl around in loops it is time to harvest those scapes and use in stir fries. Chop and sauté in olive oil to add to other vegetable dishes. The heads, or bulbs, will continue getting bigger for a few more weeks- but I have already nabbed a couple to use now. When you do harvest your garlic, it is best to let it cure for a couple of weeks in a shady, breezy location before you cut off the tops.
It’s easy to get lackadaisical in the heat of the summer, but weeding is still important if you want your best production. It is also important to keep weed seeds out of the soil to minimize your work next year. So keep weeding, but at the end of the day settle into an Adirondack chair near the garden and admire your handiwork as the sun goes down.
Henry Homeyer is a garden consultant, teacher, coach and the author of 4 gardening books. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com.