Summer Chores in the Vegetable Garden

Posted on Wednesday, June 16, 2021 · Leave a Comment 

Summer Chores in the Vegetable Garden

 

As the song goes, It’s “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy!” Well, not really. Yes, I’ve planted my 53 tomato plants, 200 onions and more, but there is still plenty to do. Let’s look at a few chores you might want to do this weekend.

 

Your tomatoes need support. If they lay on the ground, or even on a nice bed of straw, they are more prone to diseases. They need air and sunshine to stay healthy and to ripen up sooner.

 

Tomato cages support your plants and hay or straw helps prevent soil-borne diseases scaled

I like wire tomato cages as supports. I recommend getting the biggest cages possible: 54 inches tall with four support legs instead of three. They are expensive, but last for many years. Right now your tomatoes are short, and standing up on their own. But if you wait too long, they will be much more difficult to install. Do it now!

 

If you grow a lot of tomatoes and don’t have the budget to buy nice cages, you can tie them to wood stakes. Get one-inch hardwood “grade stakes”. Five footers are best because you need to push at least a foot into the ground. Tie the plants to the stakes with something soft: strips of old sheets work well, or panty hose. If you use string it may bite through the stems when they are loaded with fruit. You will need to add more ties as the plants get taller.

 

As your tomatoes get mature, you may notice that lower leaves are turning brown. This is probably early blight, a common soil-borne disease. It is not fatal, but reduces your fruit production. You can minimize by doing two things: cut off affected leaves, and mulch the soil to minimize splash-up. Grass clippings, leaves or hay will help. They also keep the roots more moist in dry times.

 

If you are growing carrots or beets, this is a good time to thin them. You really should thin them by the Fourth of July. It is tedious work, which is why many seed companies are selling “pelleted” carrot seeds. These are seeds that are coated with a clay covering to make them larger, and easier to plant an inch or so apart. Beet seeds are actually seed clusters: several seeds are in each “seed”. So even if you spaced them carefully, they need to be thinned.

 

If you planted potatoes, now is the time to look for potato beetles, or their eggs on the underneath side of the leaves. The egg masses are bright orange and easy to spot. Scrape off the eggs into a jar of soapy water. If you see the beetles or their larvae eating the leaves, get them into the water, too. By reducing their population now you will reduce their exponential increase in numbers. If you see holes in the leaves, you have the beetles.

 

Parsnips will grow in soil suitable for carrots and are an early spring treat

This is a good time to plant parsnip seeds because they need warm soil to germinate. Keep in mind that the seeds do not keep well, so do not plant last year’s seeds. Most garden centers probably still have parsnip seeds because they are not a terribly popular crop.  Parsnips store well over the winter – just leave them in the soil. I love them as an early spring treat: just boil them up, then serve them with butter and maple syrup. Yum! And don’t get discouraged if they take 2 full weeks to germinate, they are very slow.

 

I am eating lettuce from my garden that I planted early in the spring. That means it is time to plant some more seeds. Lettuce bolts when the summer gets too hot, which means that it elongates (reaching for the sky) and turns bitter before flowering and producing seed.

 

But there are summer varieties that are heat-resistant. Of the Butterhead lettuces, try Skyphos or Buttercrunch Bibb. Oakleaf lettuces such as Magenta do well, and a Romaine called Jericho does well in heat. Read the packages well or study a catalog.

 

Plant mid-summer lettuces where they get morning sun and afternoon shade if you can. You can also use shade cloth to protect against strong afternoon rays. Perhaps you can plant seeds in six-packs to get them going, then transplant them in your tomato patch where the big plants provide some shade.

 

These little basil plants I started from seed and are ready to go in the ground

Pesto season is coming up in August, so plant some more basil by seed if you don’t already have enough planted. I like planting seeds in small pots to get them well established before planting them in the garden. But if you want a lot for pesto, dedicate a 6-foot row and plant plenty of seeds. They will do fine, even if a bit crowded.

 

Look around your garden now to see what you forgot to plant. For me this year, it was dill. No matter. I shall plant some by seed, and it will grow vigorously in the heat of summer.

 

If you have run out of space in the garden, think about creating a raised bed for those last minute plantings. Most garden centers sell metal corners to help you build your own raised beds, even if you aren’t a carpenter. Not only that, your local lumber yard will cut the boards to your specifications at no extra charge. All you need is a cordless drill and some outdoor screws to put a bed together in no time. Put a little bed on your lawn in full sun.

 

Don’t forget a few annual flowers in your vegetable garden to attract bees and butterflies. Most garden centers still have plenty of flowers that are in bloom and ready to plant. Just remember to tease the roots apart before planting now, as the little cells are often root-bound. So get outside, and get busy. It’s summer!

 

Henry can be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is the author of 4 gardening books, and lives in Cornish Flat, NH.

Filed under Article · Tagged with basil, parsnips, tomato cages

Mid-Summer Tasks in the Garden

Oh I how I love the sunny weather we’ve had this summer! It reminds me of the years I spent as a young man working with the Peace Corps in West Africa. There were often 7 or 8 months of sunshine between rainy seasons. And, like there, we need to do some watering if we want to keep our tomatoes happy and healthy.

The best judge of plant water-needs are your eyes. Yes, a finger in the soil will tell a lot, but learning to judge a thirsty plant by the looks of the leaves is an important skill. A thirsty plant has leaves that are dull looking and a little limp. By the time lettuce or leafy greens collapse they are in deep trouble, so pay attention.

I like watering with a watering wand. It is a 30-inch aluminum extension to my hose, with a “rose” or nozzle at the end. By regulating a valve on it you can adjust how much water flows. I walk down the rows of my vegetable garden giving drinks to the tomatoes and lettuce, but not watering the leaves or walkways. Much more efficient than using an overhead sprinkler that waters everything. And it’s very gentle.

It’s not too late to plant seeds. Even if you plant in early August, you have all of August, September and half of October to grow things like lettuce, beans, broccoli and even some annual flowers.

It’s true, for example, that most carrots are 75 days, but some are just 55 to 60. Same for broccoli. Dig out an old seed catalog and look carefully at how many days are needed to reach maturity. We still have at least 75 days of frost-free weather, under normal conditions.

Seeds germinate more quickly now than in the spring because the soil is warm. Just be sure to water every day until they are of a size that can survive a little dryness. Mulching is good to help hold water in the soil.

This year I planted my tomatoes, or most of them, farther apart than I usually do. That, along with the dry weather, has contributed to the nearly disease-free leaves on my tomatoes. Early blight, which turns leaves yellow, brown, then black, has not been much of a problem for me.

Tomato in need of pruning

If you see tomato leaves yellowing up, cut them off. Open up the bushes by cutting off any branches that are growing in a downward direction, or into the middle of the plant. Those never produce fruit anyway. By cutting them off, you reduce chances of disease spreading and open the middle of the bush to more sunshine. And when a plant gets tall enough, cut off the tips of growing branches to keep it a manageable size- even if it means cutting off a few flower buds.

I contain my tomatoes in cages. I get the 54-inch tall ones, with 4 legs. They are expensive – $7 or $8 each, but worth the money as they last 20 years or so. Of course it’s too late now to cage your plants. But branches of tomatoes laying on the ground are very susceptible to diseases, even if you put down hay for them to lie on.

If your tomatoes are growing out of control and are outside their cages, you have get to work: tie the recalcitrant branches to the outside of the cages. I like strips of old bed sheets, as they are very soft, and much better than twine. I also use green plastic tie-up material sold on rolls. The strips come in half- and three quarter-inch wide rolls.

Tomato after pruning

You can also tie tomato stems to grade stakes. These are hardwood stakes that come as 4-to 6-foot stakes. Push them into your soil, then smack them a few times with a sledge or ordinary hammer. These are good, too, to keep cages from tipping over if you have a heavy load of tomatoes. One word of caution: if you want to work on your tomatoes, only do so when the leaves are dry. Fungal diseases spread more easily when wet.

Many of us get lackadaisical in late summer. August is a hot month, and often humid. Plants are established, and less likely to get elbowed out by weeds, so we don’t always pay attention to weeds. But we should. We never want to let weeds go to seed.

Around the edges of my garden I recently notice lots of 3- to 5-foot tall weeds loaded with seeds. I dug many, using a garden fork to loosen the soil. But when I’m in a hurry, sometimes I just cut off the tall stalks and their seed heads. I always do that with purple loosestrife near my brook, as the roots systems on a mature plant are impossible to pull out. Cutting off the stems helps to prevent the spread of that invasive weed. Don’t put stems with seeds in the compost pile.

Curled dock is a tall weed that shows up along the edges of my garden

On those days when my list of tasks in the garden seems to get longer, not shorter, I like to pause and remember that gardening is supposed to be fun, not a chore. If I don’t get those weeds pulled today, or my tomatoes pruned, I can do it tomorrow. It’s okay to sit in an Adirondack chair and admire the scenery – even if there are chores to do. 

Read Henry’s blog posts at https://dailyuv.com/henryhomeyer. You can get an e-mail alert each time he posts something if you sign up. Henry is the author of 4 gardening books. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.

Copyright © 2014 Henry Homeyer

Gardenmaus a wordpress theme by the Little Thumb Group