Food Gardening To-Dos for the 1st day of Summer

Loads of baby apples…but most will have to go!

When you’re raising food, May can feel like a busy time: weeding, sowing, weed-whacking…But June, whew! Your food garden is at warp speed!

Here in the Foothills, there was snow last week in our neighborhood, covering the highest peak we see from our front yard. 

At our place, it was 48 degrees in the daytime and pouring rain. Night temps were even colder.

Naturally, the weeds were thriving. So more weeding chores, but it was too rainy to get out and get to work.

Now, in these “Junuary” spells (as cold June weather is called around here), cool weather crops will generally do okay. But when it comes to warm weather crops…well, any seed I set in the ground would have simply disappeared. 

Then finally, this week the weather got the memo that it’s summer! In this brief window of 80 degree daytime highs, I’ve been pulling off winter mulch and prepping beds. I’m just winding up planting less hardy crops while the soil is warm: tomato starts, as well as cucumbers, zucchini, and winter squash seeds. 

Once the seeds germinate, they will be okay with a bit more cool weather.

Apple tree maintenance:

Meanwhile, everything else needs your attention! For instance, do you have apple trees?

If so, it’s an optimal time to check on your fruits. This spring, we had fruit set on steroids, where every fruit cluster has four or five fruits, so no time to waste!

To give each fruit the chance to develop into a full-size, healthy apples, it’s a good idea to check your fruiting clusters. When your fruits are about the diameter of a quarter, time to thin! 

Generally, you want to identify the most robust fruit in the cluster, then remove the others. Then, once you’ve thinned your clusters, check the distance between each fruit. Ideally, there should be about 5 inches between fruits. 

If you haven’t been hanging out in your orchard for a while, you may want to check for caterpillar nests too. 

Here in the Pacific Northwest, tent caterpillars are the scourge of home apple growers. My husband John found one nest in two of our apples trees a couple of weeks ago. It was lucky timing: the caterpillars were getting ready to migrate from the nests to devour the leaves.

Happily, he only found the two—but a neighbor had a bad infestation in the wild apples trees on his property line. John and I went out in the pouring rain and cut out the nests—there must have been at least 30 of them—and had an extra benefit! We ended up meeting the neighbor for the first time! 

And if you’re interested in learning all about tent caterpillars… Well, I’ve been through the wringer with those monsters, and I actually wrote a short ebook about them! And it’s free at my website! Just scroll down to “More Free Short Reads.”

In other fruit news…Blueberries:

June is a great time to check for “mummies.” At this point, the healthy blueberries are still green. But any purple ones need to be removed: they’re afflicted with a fungus, called “mummyberry.” Which basically destroys the berry. 

I’ve found that picking off these purple guys, keeps the fungus from spreading throughout the shrub. 

Garlic:

Pointy tips are where the seeds are developing!

If you’re growing hardneck garlic (it has a woody stem in the middle of the bulb), I recommend checking for seed stalks. 

The stalks are called “scapes”—the garlic plant will send up a sturdy shoot from the middle of the leaves, with swelling tip: the bud is a future flower, which will produce seeds. 

These scapes will take the plant’s energy away from the bulb, resulting in smaller bulbs. So time to cut off the stalk! 

Some folks like to use the scapes in cooking, but they seem a little tough to me. 

There’s more about growing garlic and maintaining your orchard in my freebie gardening guide, Little Farm in the Garden…

It’s free on all ebook stores like Amazon, Kobo or Apple and other online retailers!

Tips for your Spring Food Garden--Crop Cultivation

Asparagus tip just emerging

If you live in a cool, maritime climate like ours--the Foothills of the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest--spring gardening season is just getting into gear! 

I mentioned last week that the students in my homestead-style gardening class had lots interesting questions and comments. As promised, here's the second installment of class FAQ's about spring gardening.

It’s a temptation to buy veggie starts as soon as they show up at the garden center or local nursery and put them in the ground as soon as possible. Keep in mind that retailers often keep their starts in a protected area that’s usually warmer than the conditions in your garden.

As a result, your newly planted babies can have difficulties thriving in their new home. The lesson is, when your area is experiencing a very chilly, wet spring, try not to be in too big a hurry to plant!

Here at our house, it's showery and 45 degrees. So I'm in no rush to get more sensitive crops in the ground! Happily, crops like asparagus will grow even in cool weather--just more slowly than warmer years.

More on asparagus, specifically newly planted asparagus crowns: one student was concerned that none of her asparagus had broken ground yet. We planted 10 asparagus crowns last spring, and I noted that the stalks were much slower to show up than the established asparagus.

This second year, the tips of our new crowns didn’t appear until about 10 days after the established crowns showed up. However, the location of the new bed is probably slightly cooler—a little bit further away from the gravel paths that likely bring a bit more heat to nearby garden areas. Which could account for the slower start.

I also suggested that she watch for slugs: we had 4 or 5 new crowns that died the first season, because slugs were eating the tiny stalk heads as soon as they emerged.

Strawberries: It’s a bit late to plant new strawberry crowns—in early spring is more optimal. If you want to have a steady strawberry crop, you might consider planting a bed every year or two. I’ve found that new crowns do better in a fresh bed—not one where you’ve already been growing the berries.

The first summer of the new crowns, remove the flowers as they appear. This way, the plant can put more energy into root growth, rather than fruit production.

Also, keep in mind strawberry plants will bear high quality fruit for only about 3-5 years. They are susceptible to viruses that will deplete the plant over time—after several years, the foliage becomes sparse, and the berries shrink. At our place, our strawberries bear for only 3 years, tops.

Garlic: I’ve found it’s super easy to grow. I plant the cloves (what’s called seed garlic) in November, top dress with lots of leaves and compost, and the tops will emerge in mid-March the following spring.

Garlic in May--it likes lots of mulch!

In early summer, hardneck garlic will send up seed heads, called “scapes,” which can be harvested and eaten. If you don’t eat the scapes, cut them out anyway. They are taking energy away from the garlic heads below ground.

Keep in mind there’s a wait for the heads to fully develop before harvesting. Keep an eye on your garlic early to mid-summer as the lower leaves begin to die back. When 5 leaves are pretty much withered, your crop is probably ready to pick—at our place, that’s the 3^rd week in July.

Onions: You can plant sets, starts or seeds. I am not experienced with growing onions from seed, so I can’t speak to that. But if onion seeds take as long to sprout and get established as tomatoes, I’m guessing you’d need to start your onion seeds indoors, in late winter.

Years ago, John and I began growing onions from “sets.” Sets are small onions that are slightly larger than pearl onions, and are a little more resilient than starts. But a number of years ago, when I started buying my veggie starts locally, I found sets harder to source.

So I began buying onion starts—they’re slender little stalks with very little root mass, so they need cool, very damp soil to survive. Mulch them well, to keep the soil as moist as possible.

I used to plant my onion starts in May, when I sowed my other root crops. But despite deep mulching, these little starts really struggled in the warmer, drier soil of mid-spring. I would end up losing about ¼ of my crop. I changed my planting time to early-mid April, and have had much better success.

Permanent Plantings:

If you’re bringing new perennials, shrubs and trees into your garden, consider waiting to buy them until early fall. Given the extra watering new plants require, it’s harder to establish them in summertime. Plus, if you’re a city dweller, water can be expensive!

We lost 2 new elderberry shrubs that John planted just weeks before our region’s record-breaking heat wave. If waiting until fall to plant doesn't work, the next best option is early spring.

Rocks! If you’re digging garden beds for the first time, depending on your soil, you may also be forced to harvest an unwanted crop: rocks!

One couple in class was frustrated with the quantities of rocks they had to pull from their new planting beds. They already had piles and piles of rocks, and asked, “What do we do with them all?”

Our acreage is located in an area with very rocky, gravelly soil, so I totally sympathize. When we dug our new garden, we too unearthed vast numbers of rocks. I am lucky to have wild areas nearby: I tossed many wheelbarrow loads down the steep slope bordering our yard; I also piled many behind a huge log (a souvenir of the clear-cut) just outside our fence.

And true confessions: While digging new ground our first year, I also piled a single layer of rocks on the south side of our yard, because I didn’t have the energy to cart them off—and they are still there!

I suggested to the couple that if they had room in their yard, they could construct a dry stream bed as kind of landscape feature. Another possible remedy: if nothing else, you can leave the piles for wildlife habitat!

This was the silver lining behind the unsightly pile of rocks I created years ago. Good garden friends--like toads and salamanders that eat bugs--will enjoy the heat. Garter snakes will also live under the rocks and eat mice and voles that would otherwise devour your crops!