GARDENING TIPS

[Richard Myers]

We have the same problem with our cherries. We only have had one tree so we let the birds have them. It was a young tree. Now we have three trees so I too will have to keep the birds from the cherries. I think that God does keep most of the birds away from our crops. We do not half realize what He does do for us.

I am now getting tomatoes!  The water goes off every hour on the half hour (to scare them) and I go hunting every hour on the hour!! Last night I found the mother and her two fawns just feet from my fence. I have yet to shoot the fawns. Have been tempted to, but cannot do it. The mother, she is a different story. I found her at the door to my gardern in mid-day yesterday. So, I will have to get more serious about shooting her!! I now understand much more about the need for five smooth stones. The rocks that are not smooth do not go straight. So, I have not been able to touch the deer. But, I have shot about 50 times.  I think one good hit on the rump would solve the problem.

Last night I saw the culprit that had been nibbling on my watermelon. Sammy the skunk was toddling away from the garden when he saw me coming after him.

OK, back on topic. Here's a tip I learned the hard way.  My prize melons were getting ripe. We were discussing when to pick them. My neighbor, a rice farmers grows them every year for us neighbors!! We appreciate that!  This year I thought I would grow a few. He said that they are ripe when the first leaf closest to the stem turns brown. Or, when the thumping sound hits "g".  

I knew we were close, but waited a few more days! That seems to always be a mistake. This time it was not the deer, not he skunk, not the birds, not the thieves, but my own ignorance that created the problem. I thought that things were getting too dry and the temps have been hot. So, I watered the melons one last time. I like deep waterings. Well....that is a no no when the melons are ripe. I knew that I needed to be careful, but I watered too much and my largest melon split!! Yes, I filled her up too much and pop!!!

Here is a pic for those who like such things. It is a Charleston Grey weighing in at 26 pounds!!!  

[Richard Myers]

OK, so what good is a "tip" if one does not get the real picture. One good picture is worth a thousand words!! As much as I do not want to reveal the results of my poor judgment with a picture that will sit in your mind, I must let you see that you do not want to over water your prize melons!! There is usually more than we see at first glance.

[colporteur]

 My son said, "they must eat meat. I answered that that is a watermelon. He continued, " I never saw a watermelon like that before." We are used to green melons. My daughter said that that looks like an egg about to hatch. I think it looks more like the first step in a C section.

Are you using a sling, a sling shot, or just throwing rocks?

We were able to dig 250 lbs. of potatoes today until we got rained out. We should end up with 700 lbs. Some we gave away, some will go in our little make shift root cellars, and the rest will be canned with onions and garlic.

[Richard Myers]

Show him the first picture. It is the same melon.

A slingshot. I tried throwing rocks, but they are too far away and my arm is not good enough to be very accurate when she is running. I would have to lead her too much and might hit her in the eye.   The slingshot is pretty fast and it goes fairly straight with a smooth round stone. I have some steel balls that are very good.

Tell us the secret of growing potatoes. I have never done very well. I saw potatoes grown in straw in tires stacked one upon another. When they harvested, they would take one tire off the top and there were the potatoes in the straw. I recall one of my problems was in the harvest. I would end up cutting some of my potatoes when digging them.

Can we use any potato that is sprouting? When do we plant them?

And while we taking about such things. Has anyone grown onions from seed?

[Wally]

Tell us the secret of growing potatoes. I have never done very well. I saw potatoes grown in straw in tires stacked one upon another. When they harvested, they would take one tire off the top and there were the potatoes in the straw. I recall one of my problems was in the harvest. I would end up cutting some of my potatoes when digging them.

Can we use any potato that is sprouting? When do we plant them?

Potatoes are not hard to grow--except when it rains most of June and July like it did here this year. 

I'm not sure how much of a problem you have there with the Colorado Potato Beetle, but it can be a big problem here.  Also, your climate is different so I can't tell you when to plant there.  To miss the potato beetle cycle many of us have found out that if we plant them sometime in the first 2 weeks of June they do well.   I generally plant them shortly after I transplant my tomato seedlings.  They like a lot of water and a lot of sun.  Too much water, though can make them have a hollow spot in the middle, bordered by brown.  I found that out when I live in Washington.  It doesn't hurt anything, but they won't be good to sell because of the cosmetic damage. 

I've heard of the stacked tire method, but have never tried it.  If you keep your soil tilled between the rows of potatoes, you can "hill" them as they grow.  As they get larger, you just throw more dirt around the base.  This protects the ones close to the surface from the sun, and keeps the dirt loose so that they can grow larger.  As for harvesting:  I try to dig well away from the plant itself first, and as deep as possible, and then lift up to expose the tubers.  Sometimes I end up cutting a few, but those get washed and used first.

Cp, I hope you enjoy your potatoes.  It rained so much here that most of mine rotted in the ground.  The blessings of a maritime climate. 

[Vicki]

Wally, There must be more to it than water & sun. Last year husband pampered a small potato patch, watering & buying good dirt to build around it and he got two handfuls of about 40 spuds. I dug a small hole near my lilacs & dumped a small amount of compost in it and ended up growing 4 potatoes that took up the same amount of room as his 40. He didn't think it was so funny.

Richard, I once bought a watermelon I just barely touched the knife to and it split wide open - oh, so sweet! The neighbor asked me today when to know they are ripe for picking & I hadn't a clue. Last year was hit & miss. We'll try the advise.

cp, Will you share your recipe for canning potatoes with onion & garlic? I don't have any this year, but next year I'm hoping to improve our potato patch over 100%.    Also, how did you build your makeshift root cellar? I've been thinking we need one & don't have a clue about how to go about it. This year I only need cabbage & carrot storage so I can start small.

[Sybil]

Herbs 'can be natural pesticides'
Mint (BBC)
Common herbs and spices could help protect crops against pests

Common herbs and spices show promise as an environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional pesticides, scientists have told a major US conference.

They have spent a decade researching the insecticidal properties of rosemary, thyme, clove and mint.

They could become a key weapon against insect pests in organic agriculture, the researchers say, as the industry attempts to satisfy demand.

The "plant essential oils" have a broad range of action against bugs.

Some kill them outright while others repel them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8206045.stm

[colporteur]

Blight and potatoes bugs (in some parts) are usually the biggest problem growing potatoes. They like soils that drains well and are not too compacted. Its best if you do not walk close to the vine (in clay soil) as it will pack the soil where the potatoes are coming. If you have a small patch or if the potatoes bugs are not too bad you can pinch them but it must be done everyday as they are prolific, lay a lot of eggs and reproduce every couple of weeks. They are highly resistant to most sprays but there is a spray that must  be used at intervals no further apart than once every two weeks if the bugs are bad. If the spuds are healthy they will take a fair amount of chewing on and still produces reasonable well. A bad infestation though can wipe out the patch in just a few days if you do not do something. Commercial growers spray their spuds regularly for bugs and blight.

    There are many suggestions on how to deal with the bugs naturally but I think few are effective. I have heard that the best way to deal with them is to plant horseradish along the patch as it emits something that repels the bugs. Horseradish is an easy to grow perennial. What I do not know is how close it has to be to your patch to be effective.

    Blight kills potatoes every year just like it does tomatoes.  Typically the longer the plant lives and the bigger the stalk the better the crop. There is a copper spray that deals with mildew and blight. I heard that there is a high dollar organic spray now you can get from "Garden's Alive" That will wipe out any kind of blight. I have sprayed with copper other years and it helps quite a bit if you start soon enough. This year we had severe drought and now rain every day and also a terrible infestation of bugs. I sprayed minimally for the bugs. Fortunately I planted enough spuds so even with less than half a crop I have way more than enough. I did not spray at all for blight.
 
    The tire approach works but obviously it is a small scale novelty method. You can cage up potatoes and they will get quite tall if they are doing well. I have not tried this much but since the plant feeds the potatoes underneath it may produce bigger potatoes if you can keep the plant from dying of blight. I have heard too of gardeners using 50 gallon drums. You plant the potatoes at the bottom and then keep covering them over with dirt all the way to the top as they grow. The barrel has doors cut in the sides so you can open the doors and pull out the potatoes when they are ready leaving the little spuds to get bigger. Again this would not be practical other than as more of a novelty. You would have to know what you are doing because in a drum like that the potatoes would get little sun and I think you would have problems getting  healthy plants unless you used a heat bulb until the plants got up quite a way in the barrel. You would also want to use a soil with a lot of water retention or else you would have to water at least once every day. Heavy watering might increase your blight. For me this might be fun to try but as far as practicability it might be more work than value. These kinds of things are for the adventuresome experts. My neighbor, whom gave me all the extra garden space I wanted this year, is experimental like that. This year he grew some plants from seed in his greenhouse. The seeds are from an heirloom variety of tomato that produced a whopper of 6+ lbs. The species is called Big Zak and holds the world record for size. The seeds were over a dollar each. His tomatoes are running about 2 lbs. It takes a real expert to grow a healthy tomato from seed to maturity indoors. It is not easy to duplicate what happens outside and in a situation of prime conditions. I think he did well to get a 2 lb tomato. I have grow tomatoes that size and that is a very big tomato. I can't grasp what  a 6 lb tomato would be like for size.

Potatoes relatively easy to grow. In most areas of the country I have not had any potatoes bug problem but the blight seems to be universal. As Wally said it works well to mound the dirt around the plant. You can cover quite a bit of the plant and it does not effect it negatively as long as you do not cover over the top. I use a rake or just my foot and mound the dirt on both sides. This also pretty much does your weeding for you since if you cover over the weeds and grass with the dirt they will soon die.

Potatoes can be planted as soon as the ground can be worked. This year I planted potatoes early. Some of the plants were 6 inches tall and froze off. They just came back up again and were even with the plants that were just coming through the ground when the frost hit. I have even seen potatoes that were left in the soil from the year before grow the next spring like a perennial. A good rule of thumb in most of the country is to plant spuds on Good Friday. That might be a tad early in the far northern US and a tad latter than need be in the south. Probably Good Friday would be a good time over the whole country as in the south you have a longer growing season so it would not matter and in the north since the spuds are not vulnerable to frost it would not hurt to plant them that early.

For small root cellars I use 50 gallon drums and bury them almost to the top. If the soil around the barrel is sandy and drains well I drill a hole in the bottom of the barrel so if some snow melt gets in the barrel it will drain right through. If the soil is clay I would not do that or you may have a lake in your barrel. You can sets buckets of product in there or just put the produce in the barrel. With beets and carrots I like to uses a plastic garbage can and intermingle layers of damp sand with carrots or beets. They will stay in perfect condition for as much as a year. For potatoes I lay a piece of 1 1/2 in. Styrofoam cut to drop inside the barrel. I put it on the bottom to keep the potatoes up off the damp bottom. Then fill the barrel as high with potatoes as you think  the bottom ones will take without damage. Then I use one or two more circles of styrofoam to put over the top of the spuds and let it fall down on top of them. This will protect from extreme cold or heat on the top of the potatoes. Then the barrels lid may be laid on top. For added security against rain as it could leak around the lid place a 4' X 4' piece of treated plywood over the top or a piece of tin. This summer my produce was as though I had just dug it. The only problem I had is that with the 220 inches of snow we had last winter the snow melt ran into one barrel and produced a lake in my beets and ruined them. I decided to drill a 1/2 hole in the bottom of the barrel and watch more carefully when the snow melts so I don't get a lake around the barrel. If I would have dug in my barrels so about 6 in. was above the ground that would probably have eliminated that problem. Two or three barrels dug in like this will hold quite a bit of produce and they are relatively low cost. You could dig the barrels in by hand but I used a very small back hoe and it only took minutes. The down side is that you are reaching down quite a ways so if you have a weak back this could pose problems

[colporteur]

Vicki;

I don't have a recipe for the potatoes. My experience is you can basically do whatever sounds good depending on what you like. You can go as simple as nothing but potatoes to as extensive as making potato soup. I probably would not put corn in with the potatoes because corn should be pressured alot longer than potatoes. I like  alot of onion and garlic. I would recommend a clove or two of garlic and then dicing maybe a 1/4 cup of onion for each quart. Last year I was so busy and did not want to mess with the onion and garlic so I used powder in some of the jars. That worked well too but you cannot beat the fresh produce. Another nice touch is to add a 1/2 tsp. of Italian herbs per jar.

Cube the potatoes in 1/2 in. cubes with the skin on if you wish. To keep potatoes nice and white drop them into a brine of 1tsp. dissolved salt per quart of water. The same with the onion and garlic. Rinse the spuds etc. before blanching them in boiling water for 2 minutes. Put herbs in bottom of jar and hot pack to within 1" of top of jar. Add salt and pressure cook quarts 40 minutes and pints 35 minutes. You may include almost any vegetable like carrots and cabbage but must pressure the length of time that it takes for the vegetable that takes the longest time. If you added corn it would take 95 minutes. Most veggies like carrots and such run about the same length of time as potatoes. A canning cookbook is very helpful as there are a couple of produce like corn that take a lot longer.

[Wally]

One thing that works well for potato beetles is pyrethrin.  It is derived from an African Chrysanthmum.  Organic farmers are allowed to use it, and it can be used up until the day of harvest.  One drawback is that it is not selective--it kills all bugs.  So I rarely use it, usually only when I'm desparate.  There are organic controls, such as Bacillius thuringiensis var tenebrionis (Bt), but they are quite expensive.

[colporteur]

One thing that works well for potato beetles is pyrethrin.  It is derived from an African Chrysanthmum.  Organic farmers are allowed to use it, and it can be used up until the day of harvest.  One drawback is that it is not selective--it kills all bugs.  So I rarely use it, usually only when I'm desparate.  There are organic controls, such as Bacillius thuringiensis var tenebrionis (Bt), but they are quite expensive.

Thank you. That is helpful, Wally.

Vicki;

They blanch time for potatoes in the previous post is for old potatoes. For new potatoes they recommend that you boil them 10 minutes. I did not do so but blanched new spuds 2 minutes. They also say that when you add the boiling water to the jar use fresh water. I did not follow directions with that either and used the water I blanched with. It is probably better to follow the directions. Probably I will have more starch in my potatoes and they will be a little more pasty. I used iIalian herbs (1/2 tsp. per quart and put then in the jar first with the garlic. Just previous to filling the jars with water I added 1 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. hickory powder, and 1/2 tsp onion power. That worked well. We put up 48 yards yesterday and 2 did not seal. They were delicious.

[Richard Myers]

"We put up 48 yards..."   ?    You did your neighbors gardens also? 

I have put up 48 jars, but you count in yards?  How many jars to a yard? That must be a lot of jars!

[colporteur]

"We put up 48 yards..."   ?    You did your neighbors gardens also?  

I have put up 48 jars, but you count in yards?  How many jars to a yard? That must be a lot of jars!

Youd didn't account ford my accent.   

[Ed Sutton]

Potato sprouts are lethal, don't eat them ever they can stop a person's breathing.  The green on potatoes is dangerous for the same reason.

Has anyone ever tried this ?   Double digging a potato row and adding sand and crumbled up scrap sheet rock (gypsm board) and a dusting of epsom salts - to loosten up the ground and feed the spuds. 

Plant the spuds and put 2-3 sheets of newspaper down leaving enough open row between them to let the spuds send up shoots.  (fewer weeds less backache) 

Then 6-8 inches wider than the row drive stakes into the ground with 2-3 foot above ground then tightly stringing something like chicken wire and as the tops grow - mulch them with non composted leaves from the local munisipal leaf collection give a way.   

Potatoes like a slightly acid soil - Ph 6.0-6.5 if I remember right ? ?   Oak leaves / ground up pine needles would do that.  Plus put a soaker hose on an elevated barrel with a on / off faucet / tap - on old blocks.  once in a while make a tea of whatever your favorite plant feeding stuff and pour it in the watering barell, turn the tap - go do something else.

[Vicki]

Thanks, cp.

I can't find my canning book. I have a sinking feeling I gave it away. I've had to google info this season.

The rootcellar info is much appreciated also.

[colporteur]

Thanks, cp.

I can't find my canning book. I have a sinking feeling I gave it away. I've had to google info this season.

The rootcellar info is much appreciated also.

Vicki;

I have discovered that the little cellars work good for food that do not mind a little moisture like carrots and beets. The barrels tend to sweat on the inside in high humidity and in weather that is warm. Potatoes do not like that. The spuds that touch the inside of the barrel will pick up the moisture and rot. This will spread and the entire barrel will go bad. I think I will experiment by taking a sheet of 1" thick Styrofoam and cut it to size just the right length and height. Then it may be used as an insert and will curl around the inside of the barrel making it an insulated cooler. I think that will keep the sweat from the barrel from getting at the potatoes. I think curling the sheet like that will cause it to have outer pressure and therefore it will not need to be attached to the barrel. We will see it it will bend that tight without breaking. If not I may have to use something that will insulate and bend that tight. A thicker piece cut in a circle  and placed on the bottom and one attached to the lid should make it a perfect cooler and work well for potatoes. Thought I would mention this so you do not suffer the loss of a barrel of spuds. Last year it worked great for potatoes because the weather was very dry. This year we have had rain every day more or less for the past two weeks and I noticed some of my potatoes were wet. I caught them before they went bad but learned something. It is also always important that new potatoes are laid out for a day in a dry place so they will dry thoroughly before storing.  Carrots and beets like to be a little damp if stored in sand but spuds need to be cool and dry. Under the right conditions, cool (50-55 degrees) , dry, and dark and they will keep until next growing season. Many basements are not cool enough to work well do to having a furnace down stairs. An insulated barrel will hold 200 lbs. of potatoes.

[colporteur]

Has any of our master gardeners had to deal with root maggots/grubs? I have found that in soil that has some sand in the mix it seems to be vulnerable to this pest. I have not discovered anything yet that works well  and even chemicals are only partially effective. The problem is first noticed when a healthy plant begins to wilt even when the weather is not hot and there is good moisture. By the time the plant begins to wilt it is almost too late. Upon pulling the plant a number of small white maggots are found hollowing out the stalk of the plant as well as eating away the fine roots. They will also burrow into the root crop and they specially like spicey type roots such as turnips and radishes, Next they like beets and the roots of the cabbage family. They are not cabbage worms but a root maggot appearing like a smaller version of the fly maggot. They infect most plants including tomatoes and potatoes as well. They will decimate nearly the whole garden if not delt with at the time of planting. Surely there must be a cure but so far the county extension and other experts have not been much help. I have used Seven with very limited success. Malathion is the most effective but it is also a strong chemical that we do not wish to be eating. Does anyone have any ideas ?

[colporteur]

I believe I've found the solution for the dreaded cabbage maggot. Among other less effective treatments the like chemical 8, tilling in more humus, and tilling in the fall to help bury some of the problem is....applying beneficial parasite nemantodes. They apparently eat almost every bad guy in the soil and are harmless to plant, man, and good bugs. They are not real cheap but very effective. I will need between 35 and 60 million of the micorscopic buggers depending on whether I band the rows or broadcast the entire garden.   Floating row cover is also effective but who wants to work around a garden full of netting half the summer?