Watermelon Crop Circles

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Spotting these Unique Looking Viruses

by Sandy Swegel

Nature is so darn weird some days.  My friend Lara found four watermelons with this a design in them growing in her farm field.  Her neighbors are, um, quirky enough that one of them might have spent the night carving the design.  But a quick google for “crop circles and watermelons” turned up more equally cryptic images.

Most likely these watermelons weren’t carved by industrious aliens.  Designs like this can be caused by spot or mosaic viruses   Last year, we saw lots of the Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus that wiped out tomato plants locally.  Vining plants like cucumbers and papayas are also susceptible.

Most of these plant viruses are spread by insects, often aphids or thrips.  An infected insect goes from plant to plant spreading the virus.  Sometimes the effects are inconsequential and sometimes, as happened with the papaya ringspot virus, most of the crop can be wiped out, endangering the economic status of the entire growing area. Insects often overwinter in debris in the field or nearby, so clearing out your garden after harvest can sometimes break the disease cycle.

Not much you can do once you have the virus. Sometimes they don’t spread, and other times they wipe out the field. Lara only has four fruit so far so she’s hopeful it’s an isolated problem.

Why is tidying up always the answer to most problems?

Fall Gardening: Getting Ready

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Preparing Your Garden For Fall

by Sandy Swegel

What a great time of year this is.  And not just because the harvest is upon us and tomatoes are ripening and winter squash are filling out.  It’s a great time because school is starting again and school supplies are in the stores bringing up great memories and nostalgia for the beginning of the school year.  Sure we all hated summer vacation ending, but getting new pencils and notebooks and going back to school and seeing old friends was invigorating. The slight nip in the night air that starts in August in Colorado stimulates a new enthusiasm, much like a new year or a new chance.

Going into the garden in August is a lot like getting ready for school again.  First, you have to get rid of the chaos and clutter of summer.  We’ve been vacationing or sneaking naps in hammocks and somehow, the weeds we were carefully hoeing when they were an inch tall in May, have grown taller than us and have seed heads. So the first step of getting ready for Fall Gardening is taking a deep breath and clearing out the weeds and debris that might have snuck into the garden.

On Your Marks First, you have to be able to see your marks.  Clear out the weeds that are choking things like the bindweed threatening to bring the corn to its knees. Pull out tough stalks of spring lettuce.  They’re done…let them go! Those radishes that have been baking in the summer heat…time to recycle them into compost. Any place with diseased-looking leaves:  clear out every last leaf to reduce the chances of trouble there in the future.

Get Ready. Get ready to meet old friends again…the cold-hardy or cool season crops.  These are all the sturdy plants that don’t mind a morning freeze.  Swiss Chard and Kale or Spinach can be frozen solid on an October morning and be perfect for dinner that night.  The secret to having fresh vegetables in the Fall and long into winter is to plant while the soil is warm so that the plant is full-grown by frost.  After it gets cold, plants don’t grow very quickly, but the garden will keep them ready to eat for months.  Get ready to plant a big garden.  It’s not the end of a garden season, but the beginning of one.

Get Set. Make a plan.  Think about how many salads you’ll want  (or how many pounds of greens you bought last year.)  For greens, you want two general different kinds:  the soft sweet salad greens that will last you until hard frost and the sturdy kales and chards and collards that will be good for cooking. The local farmers call it a “braising mix” that you can pick and stir-fry well into winter. Don’t forget carrots.   This is also time to make a plan if you want a cold frame or want to set up a row cover to extend the season.

Go. It’s just like Spring again…only this time your mind isn’t gaga over a million possible gardens.  So focus on the task at hand—growing enough food for you and your family and friends to eat all Fall and Winter. Prepare the soil. Dig out big weeds. Mix in compost or organic fertilizer. Smooth the surface. Water thoroughly. Let the soil sit for two weeks for soil activity to restore itself. Order the seed you don’t have. Try something a little different like the Asian greens or just something new. They should arrive by the time your soil has rested. Plan a season extender. You can stretch your fall garden into January or February even if you live in a cold place. You can use a cold frame, a hoop house, some row cover or just bags of Fall leaves thrown over plants on extra cold nights.

Make your own Apple Picker

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DIY Gardening Tools

by Sandy Swegel

My beautiful orange apple picker came to a sad end last year under the wheels of a pick-up truck that smooshed it beyond recognition. We sadly have very few apples this year because of late frosts so more than ever I need a picker to reach the apples that are there.  My orange apple picker was very pretty, but its tiny basket area was a little frustrating. I could only pick a few apples before maneuvering the entire 12-foot pole down through the tree, take out 5 apples and wind it back up the tree.  The other problem was that sometimes the apples didn’t want to leave the tree and tugging threw other good apples to the ground, bruising them. So I started thinking about hacking my apple picker.

Well, in a digital world in which “apple” no longer means fruit from a tree, you can’t just google “hack my apple picker.” A search for DIY fruit pickers turns up lots of makeshift basket contraptions with water bottles which while clever and free, didn’t change the small basket problem.  I finally thought to look at what the commercial pickers do (besides bringing in big “cherry picker equipment” or precarious ladders.)  Somehow I couldn’t imagine teams of migrant workers with little orange baskets.

The answer is razor blades!  Rather than having a picker with wire fingers, razor blades at the end of your catching device slice the stems quickly.

So here are two possibilities for getting a better apple picker:  A DIY instructable with razor blades inside a narrow PVC pipe.  And the picker the pros use.  The DIY picker doesn’t include a bag….you have to catch the apples…so maybe you can think of a way to add a bag.  Look at the professional picker with its big sack as a model.

Apple picker: http://www.instructables.com/id/PVC-FRUIT-PICKER/

Berry pickerhttp://www.instructables.com/id/BERRY-PICKER/

Clip-n-pick fruit picker: http://frostproof.com/clip-n-pick-telescoping-fruit-picker-complete/

Harvesting Melons

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Heirloom Vegetable Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

My gardening buddies had an ice tea party at a nearby market farm this week.  Long hot summer days are ripening melons and we were eager to do some taste testing, but how do you know when melons are ripe?  They all look great.  They have a good size.  We were crouching among the plants thumping and sniffing, trying to find a perfect melon. And somebody pulled a beautifulOregano 952700-BBB baby watermelon that was the darkest green…we figured it had to be ripe.  Nope, cutting it open revealed flesh that had only just started turning pink.  If only there were some way to glue the melon back together.

Farmer Mimi finally took pity on us and showed us how to know if melons are ripe.

She grows two general types of melons in her field:  watermelons and “slip” melons such as cantaloupe and muskmelons that slip off the vine when they are ready.

The slip melons are easy: they are ripe when they easily slip from the plant when you tug lightly. If they don’t come off the vine easily, leave them a few more days.  Muskmelons will also smell wonderful when they are ripe.

Watermelons don’t slip but they are just as easy to know when they’re ready if you look at the plant.  Very close to each fruit, a tendril grows.  It’s usually green and curly.  When it dries up completely and turns brown or black, the fruit is ripe.  That was so much easier than thumping every watermelon in sight.

We also got a great growing tip for getting lots of melons.  Melons like hot days and warm nights.  Here in Colorado, we have hot days but the nights cool off. Good for us but not so much for the melons.  Mimi told us that black plastic mulch under your melons will significantly increase how many melons you get and speed up how soon they are ready.

In these hot summer days, we definitely need more melons.

For everything you ever need to know about harvesting melons, using plastic mulch and knowing when to harvest: http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/M1262.html

The Secret Lives of Vegetables

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Everything You Didn’t Know About Your Vegetables

by Sandy Swegel

This would be a better title for this fantastic new book that tells you how to double or even triple the nutrient value of your organic vegetables.  At a time when it seems like grocery store prices are doubling and tripling, this seems like a good thing to know.

The book is Jo Robinson’s, Eating on the Wild Side and it’s currently on the talk show/podcast/magazine circuit….but read everything you can.  It’s a new level of thinking about our vegetables and how we prepare them.

The short list of things I learned:

Eat wilder.  Food closer to its original form. Foods that are more bitter.  Eat the skins (mostly) just like your parents taught you. Foods that are deeper in color (like our purple carrots!)

Cook your food…but carefully.  I juice a lot of things and eat them raw even though that’s not how they always taste better but because I thought it was better for me.  Not true.  Many vegetables become more phytonutrient or antioxidant-rich after you cook them.

Here’s the “secret life of vegetables” part:  your food continues to “live” after it’s harvested.  Your vegetables are “respiring” on your counter or in your refrigerator.  Some even continue to grow.  There’s definitely a sci-fi movie in this.  Some of your food changes even after it’s cooked.

The top four things I’m going to use immediately.

1. Best way to eat lettuce.  Bring it in from the store or field. Wash. Dry.  Cut or tear (doesn’t matter which) into bite-size pieces.  Refrigerate.  It will be more nutrient-rich tomorrow than today.

2. Potatoes. I’ve inherited my mother and grandmother’s tendency to adult-onset diabetes and have to be careful with sugar. Potatoes are supposed to have a high glycemic index so I quit eating them, even though I love them.  Robinson gives instructions for cooking them and letting them sit in the refrigerator for a day to reduce the carb load by 25%.  Turns out potato salad can be good for you. God, I love this book.

3. Canned vegetables aren’t the lowest form of vegetable.  Tomatoes and blueberries are both higher in nutrients after canning as long as the BPA-free cans are used.   4. If you buy broccoli, eat it on the first day.  It goes down quickly in nutrient quality.

So buy the book or get all the free info in many ways:  Read parts of it at Barnes and Noble like I did last night.  Listen to NPR this weekend on The Splendid Table. Read the magazine interviews and watch the videos she lists on her website.  You’ll learn so much that you can annoy your meal companions with trivia for months.

http://www.eatwild.com/

After the Hail

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How to Recover Your Garden After a Storm

by Sandy Swegel

“Gardening in Colorado sucks” is how my friend described her garden after a violent storm full of hail and tornadoes passed through the towns east of Boulder this week.  Much more vivid expletives were used by all as we surveyed the destruction brought by 2-1/2 inches of rain in less than a half hour and hail that had to be cleared by snow plows.  We were actually quite lucky.  Tornado sirens were going off all over town, but there weren’t many touchdowns.

But the garden is devastated.  Well, let me correct that. The xeric plants are doing fine.  They are thin-leaved and flexible and have adapted to millennia of hail on the high plains. Russian sage and grasses and Liatris look great. Cactus definitely didn’t care.  But the plants we love in our yards: the roses and deciduous trees had their leaves shredded by the hail and broken by the winds.  Thank God we don’t rely on our vegetable gardens as our only source of food.  Corn was broken, squash stems were ripped and shredded.  The zucchini has so many stems and leaves, it will survive, but we can forget winter squash and watermelons and pumpkins.

So what can a gardener do after hail? We cowered in our houses as tornado sirens wailing “Get to shelter immediately.” Unlike Dorothy and Auntie Em in the tornado shelter, we were in furnished basements with our wireless devices googling for webcams of what was going on outside. But once we emerged, the response was pretty much the same.  “Holy xxxx”

After the storm, gardeners have to take it easy.  Remove the huge broken branches to the curb. Clean up fallen leaves.  Get your roof patched.  But don’t start cutting back the garden.  Plants are going to need whatever leaves they have left to photosynthesize for the rest of the season.  Take a day or two off so you don’t overreact.  I spent hours picking up debris and cutting stems that were completely broken.

Perennials:  do as little as possible to let leaves keep making food.

Annuals:  Cut back broken parts of flowers like snapdragons and cosmos.  Leave trailing things like sweet potato vines be for a week or so. They will often make new leaves at each node.

Shrubs:  Cut broken parts and let them be.  Like trees, they will start putting out new leaves.  I’m not completely convinced fertilizing helps now because it will stimulate new growth.  I’ll do regular fall fertilizing with a slow-release natural fertilizer.

Trees:  The trees have had such a hard year.  They struggled with late frosts this spring that killed off their first set of leaves and they had to generate a second set of leaves.  Now the hail means they’ll start growing a third set of leaves.  They will really use their food reserves.  I hope it’s not a hard winter.  When the tree dies a year or two from now, we often forget that it was the hail this year that helped do them in.

About the only other thing to do besides keep filling the compost bins is to make sure everything is well watered and mulched going into winter. Don’t pull out plants that look dead…their capacity for regeneration is amazing.

Well, there is one more thing to do:  heal the gardener’s soul by planting some new plants to bring hope and beauty back into the landscape.

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

Two Midsummer Tasks

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Taking Care of Your Plants in the Heat

July can be hot in the garden.  If you’ve kept up with weeding earlier in the season, there may not be too much work outside of harvesting veggies.  Two midsummer tasks are important now.

Fertilize plants that have been working hard.

Tomatoes….because I want lots of tomatoes and the plants are growing like crazy in the summer heat.  I fertilize with a liquid organic bloom fertilizer.

Roses….because they just finished their big summer grand blooming and will rest a bit….but I want another big flourish as soon as the weather cools a bit.  I like the organic granular fertilizers although if there are dogs in the yard who try to eat the blood meal and bone meal in them, you’ll need to use a liquid.

Greens and other vegetables.  The chard and kales have been working hard and I will treat them to a nice kelp foliar spray.  It also makes the garden smell like ocean breezes!

Start seeds for your Fall Garden. This is hard to remember in the summer heat.  But now is the time to start broccoli and cauliflower plants so they’ll be ready to mature and sweeten in crisp Fall nights.

And if you like peas….it’s a good time to get them started again.  I waited till August last year and didn’t get much of a Fall crop.

Of course, you should always keep up your succession planting….keep putting in new plants or seeds where you’re pulling old ones out.

Happy Summer Days!

Bumblebees Love Purple

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The Bees Favorite Flower

by Sandy Swegel

I visited one of my favorite suburban lawn alternative gardens yesterday.  It’s a true pollinator’s heaven of nectar and pollen, right on a neighborhood street. Full of perennial gaillardia and rudbeckia, and reseeding annual larkspur, cleome, and sunflower, the garden uses about the same amount of water as your average lawn.

Bees were everywhere.  Neighbors stop by in wonder at what can be done with a front yard instead of plain old grass.  In the median strips in front of the flowers, kales and lettuces produced greens for the neighboring. This time of year, gaillardia and rudbeckia are dominant with their yellows, oranges and reds.  But something different this year was a plethora of purple larkspur.  Curious, I  asked community urban farmers Scott and Wendy about the variation.  They and the landowner are all careful gardeners, unlikely to throw in something different without a reason.  Scott explained matter-of-factly, “Well it’s for the bumblebees. They prefer purple.”  I was skeptical since I see bumblebees all day on different colored flowers.  He assured me they had watched the field for the last couple of years. The bumblebees always went for purple flowers.  And walking on the path, huge fat bumblebees were on the purple larkspur, gorging away.

I couldn’t resist a little more research and sure enough, studies in Germany showed that baby bumblebees love purple flowers. Purple flowers are thought to contain more nectar than other colors and that baby bumblebees who chose purple flowers had a better chance of survival…they then passed the purple preference onto their offspring.

I’m not sure what most piqued my curiosity this day…I loved learning that bumblebees like purple flowers best.  But I think I was more intrigued by Wendy and Scott just noticing all season that the bumblebees liked one particular color.  In the end, though, I’m most impressed with the bumblebees who somehow got the humans to plant their favorite food.  Very clever bees.

More info: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/21/bees-can-sense-the-electric-fields-of-flowers/