Tackling Weeds

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What to do When You Are Overwhelmed by Weeds

by Sandy Swegel

Our friend and blog reader CJ recently sent us some great suggestions about tackling weeds when you are absolutely overwhelmed by weeds on your property.  She has a large hilly country property that is atop a mesa so weed seeds fly in from miles around.  Her gardens are xeriscaped and mulched which helps discourage weeds, but last Fall’s flooding here in Colorado has created a bumper crop of tall lush weeds that threaten to take over everything.

If you have more weeds on your property than you have hours in the day to pull, here are her suggestions.

First, I tackle any weed that is threatening the life of a plant I care about.
I weed an area around the plant perimeter. This doesn’t take too long, and often is the first weeding I do in the spring.

Second, I must give priority to any weed that is going to seed.
Especially if it is upwind from my beds.   Downwind, given our terrain, I don’t care too much.   I just weeded cheatgrass and that thin sticky thing with tiny yellow flowers along the driveway berm.  Got the whole thing weeded in a little over an hour.

Third, I weed where the weeds bother me…as in, if something is getting ready to bloom, I don’t want to stare through a bunch of weeds to see it.  So I try to be aware of focal points, and where the eye is naturally drawn to.

Finally, with noxious weeds, my rule is just to get rid of them before they release seeds, at all costs, but not necessarily as a first priority if they are still flowering.   (and yes, I left the donkey tail this year until now because it is the first thing in my garden for the pollinators, along with the dandelions.)

Of course, sometimes when I just need a rush, I go out and pull the biggest weeds I can find, so after 30 minutes I have this pile twelve feet high and feel like I’ve really accomplished something.   :  )

Thanks to CJ for sharing her wisdom of many years of living on the windblown high plains.  I love the idea of the adrenaline rush from a frenzy of pulling big weeds.  I do love doing that too!

 

 

Photo credit http://bikesandbirds.blogspot.com/2010/07/weeds.html
http://www.suburbanprairiehomemaker.com/2012/08/garden-party-our-lasagna-garden.html

 

 

 

Spring Tune-up for your Drip Irrigation

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Irrigation Checklist

by Sandy Swegel

For gardeners in dry climates, irrigation is a necessary evil.  Irrigation makes growing possible, but it can be a

royal pain trying to keep it intact and actually watering the plants it is intended to water.  You will have fewer problems with your irrigation (and thus fewer dying plants) if you take the time in Spring to tune-up your drip system.

To tune-up your drip system, wait for a fine day in Spring after there has been a dry period, and manually turn your drip system on and run it for about 15 minutes.

Here’s your check list:

 Obvious leaks and holes.  This is easy….a big spray of water up in the air is the surest sign an emitter has popped out of its hole or a line has been accidentally cut.  I use the little flags on sticks to mark places that will need repair.

 Dislocated or broken lines. The reason you run the drip system for 15 minutes before you start to check individual plants is so you will easily be able to see the spreading moisture in the soil under each dripper.  If you can physically see a little drip line but no water, then the line is clogged or has been dislocated from the main supply line.  How does this happen?  Squirrels and dogs disconnect lines when they run through the garden.  Little creatures like mice have figured out that water runs through these lines and a little nibbling on the tubing provides a water supply from the water left in the line.  Most of the time you just reconnect the tubing and are done.

 Clogged emitters.  Sometimes emitters just break but most of the time an emitter that’s not emitting is just clogged.  Tiny insects have figured out this water source too….and sometimes lay eggs right in the emitter tip, which from their perspective is probably a nice moist cave. Usually just taking the emitter and blowing into it is enough to clear the line.  I’ve also seen plant roots grow up a tube looking for water.

 Sliced lines.  This is from human error.  A garden full of tiny drip lines and sprinkler supply lines shallowly buried means the gardener accidentally slices through the irrigation system, sometimes not realizing it.  A big puddle of water instead of the small moist area around an emitter is your clue.  Just fix it and resolve not to dig in the garden without checking for the location of the irrigation line.

Spring tuning your irrigation can be tedious, but well worth it in terms of keeping your plants alive.  While you’re at the task, this is a good time to check the times on your controller.  Sometimes in August and September when it’s hot and dry, we crank up the length of time the irrigation runs….Plants don’t usually need so much water in Spring, so you can save water and money by having different run times in Spring and Summer.

Drip irrigation is still my favorite way to water frugally.  You get water to the roots without having the waste of high pressure sprayers over spraying and watering the street.  Sprayers also encourage fungus from the moisture sitting on the leaves.  Installing a drip system requires us to get in touch with our Inner Engineer, but it’s a very successfully way to water if you just do a Spring Tune-up.

 

Photo: http://www.dripirrigation.com/drip_irrigation_tutorial

http:///http://home.howstuffworks.com/irrigation3.htm

 

 

 

Aphids on your Kale – Ewwww

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All About Handling AphidsImage by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/melanimarfeld-7353531/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=5224572">Melani Marfeld</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=5224572">Pixabay</a>

by Sandy Swegel

A gardener I know recently went out to his cold frame to harvest some beautiful kale he could see pushing against the top of the frame.  Instead of an ecstatic reaction of joy to this spring treat, he quickly retreated with a big “Ewww.”  His kale was absolutely coated in aphids.  He had nursed it and even given it extra organic nitrogen fertilizer recently and this was the thanks he got.

Aphids are irritating pests.  They are very prolific and can have twenty generations in a season. And it could take a long time to rinse each one off a leaf of kale, so what’s a gardener to do if they are not ready to become an insectivore?

You Can Prevent Aphids

Our gardener probably got aphids for a couple of reasons: 

His cold frame was sealed pretty tight, so predators like birds and ladybugs couldn’t get in to control the aphids. Also, recent warm temperatures stressed the plants in the closed frame. Opening the cold frame on warmer days will help.

They are everywhere.  They overwinter on mustard weeds which are prolific in the spring garden. There’s no avoiding the aphids altogether on cole plants, but cleaning up the debris in the garden and weeding out the mustard weeds will remove many of the eggs from last year.

They adore nitrogen. The soluble nitrogen he had just added just enticed even more aphids to come eat over here!

Plant chard and spinach. Aphids don’t bother them as much.

You Can Treat Aphids

Aphids are super easy to treat:  a blast from a garden hose washes them to the ground and they don’t easily crawl back.

Soapy water (a drop or two of dish soap or Dr. Bronner’s in your watering can or spray bottle) kills them easily.

Check the plants frequently: the aphids are often under the leaves or along the stems…hard places to reach.

You Can Clean the Kale

A sink full of water, most people agreed, was the best way to clean the aphids off so you don’t disgust your dinner guests.  Submerge the kale completely and squish it around a lot.  The aphids float to the surface. Repeat.

Someone else suggested dissolving some salt in hot water and then adding it to the sink of cold water, letting the kale sit for 30 minutes.  The salty water helps dislodge the aphids.

Don’t give up. Kale is incredibly nutritious not to mention tasty and easy to grow.

 

Read more about aphids here

For complete information on managing cabbage aphids, http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r108300811.html

 

 

A Pest you Can’t Help but Love

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Love For the Hornworm

by Sandy Swegel

Yesterday was a bright sunny day and pollinators were out gorging on the nectar of asters. It’s been a good year for asters, those vigorous re-seeders.  Besides honey bees and some native bees, there were at least seven hummingbird sphinx moths in a small garden area. Their very long proboscis lets them eat from many kinds of flowers and carry pollen about.  I was watching them while scooping up ten inches of topsoil that flood waters had moved about 15 feet away from the raised tomato bed.  So I was scooping the soil up and putting it back.  Easy enough.  In one shovel there was an enormous mud-covered caterpillar squirming.  Slowly I realized that underneath all that mud there was a bright green tomato hornworm and my gut reaction was to kill it right away so I could save my tomatoes.

Fortunately I also immediately thought about the hummingbird moths I had just been admiring. My brain cells reminded me the hummingbird moth and the tomato hornworm are one and the same creature.  How can I both love and hate one creature?  I also found myself filled with compassion for the hornworm because we had earlier pulled and thrown away all tomato plants. Between the ecoli the flood waters carried, the fungus growing on the leaves from too much water, and the forecast of 34 degrees tonight, there was no good reason to keep tomato plants.  So no more food for the hornworm.  Poor hornworm….flood and famine.  He was really big and fat so I hoped he had enough calories to pupate and I threw him on the pile of mud and dead tomato debris that was going to the landfill and wished him well.

Next year I just have to remind myself to plant enough tomatoes so one or two hornworms can grow up into the beautiful hummingbird sphinx moths that pollinate my flowers.

Photo Credit http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-07/lifestyle/41153436_1_light-tomato-darkhttp://naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/

Help! I’ve been Invaded by Japanese Beetles!

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How Do I Get Rid of This Terrible Pest?

by Sandy Swegel

I was so late writing my blog post this morning because I foolishly strolled out into the rose garden, where everything was delightfully dewy and fresh from rains last night.  I thought I would deadhead a few late season roses that looked spent.  As I got close, I was puzzled about how beat up the rose blossoms were and wondered if the rains had been excessive.  Then I saw the glint of iridescent green and saw my first ever Japanese beetle. Now I know what gardeners in the East have known for a long time.  This is a terrible pest.  The destruction on flowers and foliage was dramatic since I was last in the garden three days ago. I spent the next solid hour hand picking the beetles and dropping them in a bucket of soapy water.  There were as many as six eating a single blossom.  I could look at a plant two feet away and see one on every top leaf. And I swear they were mating and eating at the same time.

Colorado has generally not had a Japanese beetle problem.  It wasn’t till about 2009 that the state ag department reported some in pockets of south Denver.  I was living in ignorant bliss.  I don’t understand how we went from no beetles in my area to hundreds in my rose garden alone.  Handpicking will clearly not be enough, but most of the pesticides I’ve read about would also kill bees and beneficial insects.

Do any of you know of successful controls?  I’ve googled treatments but haven’t found much info on what might really work in eradicating them.  We’ve actually been kinda happy around here about warming trends.  A slightly shorter winter didn’t seem like such a bad thing when you’re in the foothills of Colorado. But now the pests that we’re getting that also appreciate the warming trend is not worth warmer days in April.  How do I have a pretty organic garden with Japanese beetles?

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05601.html

My Squash is Wilting

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Trying To Get Along With the Squash Bug

by Sandy Swegel

Eww…Yet another bug thriving this year and ruining my food.  Most of us have experienced our squashes suffering from powdery mildew that coats the leaves white, but knowledgeable gardeners are perplexed here in Colorado by squash that suddenly completely wilts and die (Asana wilt).

Turns out squash is wilting often due to a very small bug, the squash bug, that injects a nasty venom into the stems wilting and killing the entire vine.

“Can’t we just all get along?” I holler at them.  There’s an entire large squash plant and I’m willing to share with bugs….but the squash bug wants it all.

This is a pest you need to be aggressive with if you see it because it doesn’t share but will kill your whole plant given a chance. Look for the adult bug (looks a bit like a stink bug) or nymph (distinctive antenna and small head) and kill it (take a small bucket of soapy water into the garden with you and throw the bugs in, to drown them, if you don’t want to ‘squash’ them). More importantly, look for the eggs on the underside of leaves and crush them.  Handpicking works well in a small garden if you’re vigilant.

We have to stand our ground against creatures like the squash bug. I explain it to them as I dunk them in the soapy water or throw them to my chickens….if you don’t share and play well with others, you lose your privileges in my garden!

For more info http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05609.html

 http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/4h/default.php?page=snr40&stage=larva

5 FREE Soil Amendments that you can Easily Find!

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Creative Ways to Help Your Garden

by Sandy Swegel

One of the problems with gardening is that you just can’t rush Mother Nature.  If you don’t get those tomato seeds planted early enough, there’s just no way to trick the plants into growing overnight. Compost is the same…you can’t just mix everything up today and use the compost tomorrow.  But there are things you can scavenge that you can add directly to your garden that help your garden a lot more than those sterile-looking bags of manure or compost they sell at the store. And they’re free!

1. Leaf Mold

Better even than regular compost for improving soil texture, leaf mold is what you end up with after a pile of leaves has rotted down to a dark earthy mix with only a few leaves still recognizable. This can take one or two years depending on how wet your climate is.  You can find leaf mold that’s been breaking down for months or years anywhere leaves collect:  where the wind blows them behind the garage or along the shady side of the fence.  Your neighbor’s yard is a good place to find it, or along stream beds or in shady woods.  Dig in to get the dark damp leaf mold next to the soil and leave the dry leaves for another year. Spread the leaf mold over your garden, at the bottom of planting holes, or along the trenches for your potatoes.  This is pure gold for your garden.

2. Coffee grounds

Coffee shops are often willing to give you their used coffee grounds for free. Starbucks packages them up for you in empty large coffee bags.  No need to do anything special with the grounds…just sprinkle them across your soil or at the base of plants.  The plants like the boost from caffeine almost as much as you do.

3. Weed Tea  

When I’m weeding, I keep two buckets with me…one for the green leaves (and roots) of weeds like dandelions, thistle, dock, lambsquarters and one for the seed heads or other garden debris I’m cleaning.  All those long tap roots that are so hard to dig out have been pulling up minerals and micronutrients from deep in the soil.  Once my bucket of green leaves is mostly full, I fill the rest with water and leave the bucket out to “steep.” After four days or longer, (ideally until it starts to smell bad), I use this nutrient rich water to water the garden. The leaves get thrown out or into the compost. Plants that get this water turn a nice dark green.

4. Grass Clippings

If you (or your neighbor) have a lawn (and you don’t use weed killer), the grass clippings are the perfect mulch for your garden.  Layer the clippings thinly on the surface of the soil near your plants. Keep adding it every week and it will keep breaking down at the soil line into compost.

5. Newspaper

Most newspapers are printed now with soy ink and safe to use in the garden.  Lay three or four sheets of newspaper over the soil in your walkways or between rows and cover with mulch.  The newspaper helps block weeds from coming up, and reduces evaporation.  Worms LOVE the taste of newspaper and will help break it down into rich soil.

The Midsummer Lull

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Preparing for Late Summer Harvest and Beyond

by Sandy Swegel

I was surfing the garden internet last night at Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2012/06/grazing-my-way-through-the-lull.html where blogger Michele Owens is lamenting the midsummer lull in her vegetable garden.  It’s so true, late June is a difficult time in both the vegetable and flower garden.  There was the wild early June flush of color on roses and spring perennials.  Mid-June brought peas and tons of chard and kale and spinach.  But the intense unusual heat of the last couple of weeks made the spinach and arugula bolt and the peas and fava beans quickly went hard in their shells.  Tomatoes are full of flowers and tiny green tomatoes, but there’s not much for eating.  The one exception is zucchini…The zucchini are pumping out a new zucchini or two a day….but it’s hard to find other vegetables for dinner. How can the basil be so small when I started them months ago?

The flower garden is similar. The hot season rudbeckias are finally starting but there isn’t the lushness the garden of a few weeks ago had.  First of July is a great time to notice what’s in bloom in your (or your neighbor’s) vegetable and flower garden and vow to plant that this year or next.  Ideas I’m stealing that look great in this otherwise lulling time:

Leek seed heads.  I let the leeks perennialize and plant themselves each year….so right now the flower heads are tall and a lovely pink, covered with bees.

Monarda.  Drifts of monarda are abloom…and full of bees and butterflies.

Echinacea.  Although some think of echinacea as a full sun xeric plant, it is at its prettiest with some shade and with irrigation. Some of the nicest echinaceas grow at the edge of apple trees where the extra coolness makes them vibrant.

Daylilies.  Get the camera out so you can document the daylilies you really like (in your yard or your neighbor’s) so you can make divisions next Spring.

It’s great anticipating the bounty that’s about to burst in mid-July.  Hard to believe during this lull that we’ll soon be leaving tomatoes on the vine because there are too many to eat.

If Plants Could Walk

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Escaping the Weather

by Sandy Swegel

They’d run for their lives!  This week anyway.  Extreme weather conditions prevail here in Colorado and throughout the country.  Here in Boulder, we’re enduring day after day of record-setting temps over 100.  Plants are crisping just from the 4% humidity.  And as we learned in our last severe drought in 2002, no matter how much city water you irrigate with, plants don’t do as well with irrigation as they do with natural water from rain.  If plants could walk this week, they would mosey on over to the shade next to the irrigation ditch for respite.

While we bake in the heat, my sister took her annual vacation to Florida so she could sit on the beach in the middle of Tropical Storm Debby.  Plants in some areas of the Gulf Coast desperately yearn for legs this week.  If only they could walk they would get out of the downpour of hard pelting rain and lift their feet out of the bog and mire that soil has become with excessive rain.  How’s a plant supposed to live when its roots are stuck in wet muck putrifying in the heat.

The happiest plants in dire weather can be the ones in containers with a doting human around.  My neighbor nudges her containers on wheels into the shade when the western sun is too debilitating.  Even her tomato loves the respite from the blazing sun.  Unlike my spinach, hers isn’t bolting because now that summer is upon us, she moved her containers of greens under the apple trees where cooling misters cool the greens enough they don’t have to bolt yet…and the apples grow big with the bit of extra water from the misters. One pot of summer greens was fortunate and moved inside into the air conditioning in a sunroom so the family could enjoy sweet lettuce greens a little longer.

Alas, for plants without feet, all you can do is offer some respite from the weather.  Shade cloth or row cover judiciously placed now might save some plants facing death from heat exhaustion.  If that’s not possible, a judicious mid-day misting sometimes helps.  The water mist may help the plant survive desiccation and it certainly helps perk up the gardener.

Plants that really need feet this week are the ones burning to death in the Colorado wildfires.  There are eight major wildfires in Colorado and over half of the wild-fire fighting crews in the US are in Colorado now.  We are so grateful to the men and women who come from near and far to battle out-of-control wildfires in 100-degree temps in heavy gear.  Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.

Survive the Heat

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Help Your Plants Escape the Heat

by Sandy Swegel

It’s hot hot hot here in Colorado and to make it worse, smoke from the wildfires out of control has caused local authorities to issue “stay indoors” advisories.  We’re all suffering, plants especially since they can’t get up and come inside away from the heat and particulate pollution.  How can we help our plants survive the heat when they are stressed?

Don’t overwater.  A little extra water is good now, especially since air humidity is almost nonexistent, but you can easily kill your plants with overwatering.  Droopy leaves can also mean intense air heat, not just lack of water in the soil.  Put your finger in the soil to see if it is really dry before you water again.

Recognize Heat Stress.  The easiest way to recognize heat stress in plants is to wait until after it is cool in the evening.  If the plant perks up and stands tall again, you have confirmation that the plant was droopy because it was trying to conserve water loss to evaporation.

Make Some Shade.  It can easily be 15 degrees cooler in the shade.  You can make some temporary shade for your plants with shade cloth, row cover or burlap.  If you have coffee roasting companies near you, they usually have lots of free burlap coffee bags.  Last year my neighbor had enough row cover for one section of peas.  Those peas produced for another two weeks, while the uncovered peas just went to seed.

Mist mid-day.  Another neighbor has magnificent salad greens throughout much of the summer and says it’s because she waters/mists every day at 1 pm.  Just like in the grocery produce section, little misters come on for two minutes and cool everything down.  Scientifically, I know that humidity is gone quickly and misting should only work if you do it every hour, but her greens are pretty amazing.

Be More Vigilant for Pests.  Any stress such as heat on a plant makes them more susceptible to pests.  Keep an eye out for more pests than usual.  Hosing aphids off gives the plant and the gardener a little more humidity.

Mulch, if needed.  A couple inches straw or grass clippings will hold water in the soil and cool the roots.  If you didn’t mulch earlier, now is a good time to start.

Check containers to see if they needed to be watered twice a day.

Protect the gardener.  Drinks lots of water.  Getting dehydrated is easy and the gardener needs a clear head so he/she can take care of the garden. Wear hats and sunscreen.  And now in Colorado, wear a dust mask to prevent inhaling too much smoke from fires 90 miles away.