Growers' guide to good beets

Beets should look like this.....

or this.....

but not like this.  Don't eat these.

I have searched online for beet diseases but yet found nothing to explain this affliction.  They are all from the southeast quarter of the beet bed, the same area where all the sunchokes were covered in fungus when unearthed in the spring, and, interestingly enough, close to one of our many ant hills.  I can't help wondering about that.  Another group of ants appears to have done in this cabbage in an otherwise healthy population.

This colony held its mating event yesterday.   Ants flying through the air are even more off-putting than ants crawling on the ground.  It was of some comfort that the sex-crazed drones were contained within the row cover.  I wonder if mating can happen when the queen's flight is limited to less than two feet.  Later in the afternoon, all was quiet, which is nice in a way but also probably means the queen is back in her chamber manufacturing a fresh batch of workers.

Your daily squirm

About once each year we find a large and revolting larval form on the property.  This year's catch is a tomato hornworm, found by Barry this morning on the concrete patio, nowhere near the tomatoes.  It is 7 cm long, firm and leathery to the touch, and enjoys doing laps of whatever it is trapped in or sticking its head in the ground when permitted to roam about the lawn.  Unfortunately, the grotesque undulations of its locomotion can't be conveyed by the still camera.  If some lucky bird hasn't snapped up our hornworm by morning, maybe I will get a video.

Time now for "What's Goin' On"

The post title is amusing only to those who received cable tv channels from Maine in the 70's and 80's.  If you are hoping to read about upcoming events at the Bangor Mall, you are going to be sorely disappointed here.

It's just over a month since my hasty post about what was going down (and coming up) in the garden, so here is an update.

Tomatoes were all transplanted by the first weekend of June and all except one have survived the onslaught of flea beetles.  Another one, planted upside-down, appears to have succumbed to a broken stem suffered during high winds.  All others are looking sturdy.  They always look terribly weak and vulnerable after transplant and toughen up incredibly fast.  They have already had their first axil pruning.  Peppers, melons, cucumber and basil are all in containers.  I've put one container of watermelons, one of peppers, one tomato in the greenhouse to see how they like it there in the summer.  All potatoes successfully sprouted and have blossoms already.

defiant tomato

potato bed june 24

costata romanesca
 june 9

Only three zucchini plants made it to transplant and they are now hanging over the sides of their bed.  (The grim hue of the early photo is a result of me forgetting I'd been playing with the white balance on my new camera.)  I'd better remember to measure the full grown diameter this year; one plant has already shaded the ground cherry I thought was a reasonable distance away from it.  Fencing and a guard iguana have been installed to protect the ground cherry.

costata romanesca june 28

red kuri getting a grip

Four winter squash plants made it to transplant: one Uncle Dave's Dakota Dessert and three Red Kuri.  We got one large and excellent Red Kuri gourd last year and would like to have more.  Uncle Dave's is there for back up.  The squash ladder worked out okay in 2011, but had to be moved for the sake of crop rotation.  Squash are in the "heavy feeder" group.  In moving the ladder, I also turned it, for some reason I don't recall, and the plants were place on the south side of the mesh they are meant to climb.  Of course they all tried to vine south, away from the mesh.  I applied some encouragement yesterday and hope they soon get a better grasp of what they are supposed to do.

beets and chard undercover

Beets and Swiss chard are lush and almost blemish free in their covered bed.  It's not a tight seal, but enough to drastically reduce access for leaf miners.  It has been years since we have been able to just rinse and slice the Swiss chard without first tearing away the scabby bits.  With the row cover protecting it from heavy rain and pests, we barely need to rinse it before eating.  Downside, the bed would look more beautiful without the cover (but only until the leaf miners found it).  The section with beets (foreground) has grown especially bulgy. I might have to start eating around the edges.

To be continued......

Animal Farm

"Indy, why does the floor move?"  In Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was snakes.  When the ground moves on my street, it's usually ants.  Sometimes I dig them up by accident and a shiny black slick rises to the surface. What's the going commodity price on a barrel of ants? I wonder.  Occasionally there is an almost imperceptible wave across the rock garden.  Something is in motion, but you have to look closely to see that it's ants on the move.  I suppose they get restless by times.  The other day I lifted a bucket that had been left too long in one spot.  The ants have no sense of the temporary nature of a plastic bucket.  The underside had an outer rim that elevated the bottom of the bucket just enough to make it the roof of a lovely ant nursery.  I ruined everything.  Well, not quite.  I could have ruined everything, but instead of viciously stomping on their baby sisters (which look very much like toasted puffed rice cereal), I took a video of the ants hurrying them to underground safety.  That's about all the attention the ants have received from us lately.  If they want to distract us from the other animals in our yard, they will have to be a lot more trouble.

It's caterpillar season again.  We find forest tent caterpillars ascending the trunks of green ash trees on the boulevard.  Barry has banded these trees with fiberglass insulation and tanglefoot, and ventured as far as his ladder will reach to remove any visible (and accessible) clusters.  But the trees are huge.  Out of reach, thousand of caterpillars munch through the leaves and defecate on the ground, the sidewalk, vehicles, formerly clean laundry hung out to dry, flowers and foiliage in the front garden.  I suppose the vegetable garden is getting a little more sun this spring, with most of the leaves of the big shade tree having been processed into little black granules and dropped to the ground.  There is a green ash not far from here that has been completely defoliated.  A few crispy rolled up leaves dangling from one twig were the only evidence that it wasn't dead.  It is said that trees can recover from complete defoiliation, and we have seen some new healthy leaves emerging.  But can they do it year after year?
It's not just the huge trees.  The apple tree is a wreck and the pear tree is better but still mangy.  The critters are also into the haskaps, strawberries, and even the new cotoneaster hedge, whose tiny leaves you would think are not even big enough to roll up into a shelter.  And the dangling of the younger larval instars (as seen here on the water tank)!  The air is thick with them by times.  They are unavoidable.  As we headed out on a bike ride (it was nice to have a few hours away from tall trees), Barry observed a mobile of caterpillars spinning and swaying, glowing in the morning sun.
We are trying to do our bit to stop the devastation, with the afore-mentioned tanglefoot plus Btk and Trounce and a knife and a fly swatter and electric bug zapper rackets and our shoes, even fingers in a pinch.  Greenhaven was sold out of Btk today, but there are rumours that Country Blooms still has some.  How long before it's only available at inflated black market prices?

Leafhoppers sucked the life out of our grape and Virginia creeper leaves last summer.  I can't see in past blog posts that I recorded this, which is quite disappointing because I would like to know when it was they overwhelmed us and caused us to resort to using the Shop-Vac.  This photo was taken mid-August and looks to be early in the battle.  They made short work of the leaves at the time, but the vines were still able to produce grapes.  Now we see them in June.  Barry has been diligent with the soap spray, trying to nip this plague in the bud.  The tricky part is getting to the underside of leaves (where the hoppers feed) of vines making their way across the greenhouse roof.

Another pest that seems to have shown up early is some form of flea beetles.  These have always shown up en masse late in the summer, usually on squash leaves or bolted radishes, where they weren't going to have much effect on garden production.  I don't recall seeing them in June before, and not on tomato leaves.  It is likely a different kind than we have had; there do seem to be species that go for different plants.  Anyway, there they were last weekend, chewing holes in the wee tomato plants.  More work for the insecticidal maniac.  I left straw mulch on the garden beds over winter.  Is this a kindness to pests?



There has also been some clandestine eating of pole beans and bush beans, but these are one-plant-at-a-time type attacks, and they were due for some thinning.  May be we should just grow onions and parsnips.  They seem to be invincible.  Or maybe we should give in and call these animals "livestock" instead of "pests".

A change in the weather

It's the final day of August, a day which happens to be cool, wet and dark, as if summer disappeared literally overnight.  It didn't - warmth and sunshine will be back in a couple of days - but it feels that way.  It would be a good reminder, if I hadn't started thinking along these lines a week ago, that wrap-up time is approaching for much of the annual vegetable garden.  Don't want to leave it all to be done on a couple of blustery October weekends.

The pea vines are mostly brown, yet they still carry living green branches that bear pods and peas.  They aren't as sweet and tender and perfectly shaped as they were in July, but quite edible.  The same goes for beans, especially the rattlesnake pole beans.  After two or three good weeks they seem to go from immature to overdone without passing through an appropriate stage for picking.  So we put up with beans that are a little bulgier than we prefer.  I picked off a couple of shriveled pods from these sad Schweiserreisen plants.  If the seeds germinate, I can pick the rest and put this mess to rest.

Summer squash - zucchini and papaya pear - continue to bear perfect fruit even as their leaves are going yellow (and being perforated by slugs).  It's time to tie a "do not pick" ribbon around a few specimens to ensure we have some seeds for next year.  We grow less enthusiastic about giving away our surplus.  The stem on at least one winter squash has changed colour, which probably indicates that it's done. I could put it away and get the vine chopped up now rather than later.

Onion tops fell over long ago, but as long as they are green I keep hoping the bulbs will continue to grow.  Our onions never get as big as the set package promises.  Leaving them in the ground doesn't seem to hurt them, provided they aren't been set upon by pests.  We have found edible-looking onion bulbs while turning over the garden in the spring.  Garlic tops, conversely, are standing erect and are totally devoid of green.  The whole bed will be dug up when ground dries up a bit.  Some will be replanted, but in a different location.

Great seed-bearing versions of otherwise short plants have arisen and been felled.  Garden cress, pak choy, parsnip and lettuce seeds were collected last weekend.  Radishes are still in the works, if they survive the late summer onslaught of flea beetles.  Some of the Simpson lettuce seeds have been sown with hope that there is still time to grow leaves of a useful size.


Tomatoes are finally ripening - Tigerella, quickly followed by Tribe's Tobique, with San Marzano just starting and Longkeeper stubbornly staying green.  It's no wonder it keeps the longest if it's the last to ripen.  Not a hint of blossom end rot this year.  Is it the frequent watering, the straw mulch, the compost tea, the varieties? Controlled experiments take too long.  We just have to keep doing all of the above.

Potato plants are a bit yellow, a bit holey (slugs again) and very much in the way, having overgrown all pathways adjacent to their bed.  Barry dug up one end of the bed on Sunday, so we can more easily get from one side of the large garden to the other and we now have a large bag of potatoes for eating in the near future.  The tubers seem to keep better in the ground than in the basement, so we'll hold off further excavation for a while yet.  Besides, they might still be growing.

Carrots still have lush green tops and if we're really lucky, chunky little 3-inch roots.  The entire harvest is apt to fit in a bread bag.  We have eaten a few and found they have genuine carrot flavour.  If only they would be a bit more tender (and longer!).  They can be harvested and stored in the fridge as soon as the zucchini and beans clear out of there.  Or, they can stay in the ground until I lose my patience with them for growing so slowly.  (I like the idea of the Slow Food movement, but can't claim to be a disciple.)  Carrots sown under the rattlesnake beans have no doubt died of darkness; those among the white beans live, even if their roots are not substantial.  Since they are near the edge of the garden, they are probably the best candidates to be next year's seed carrots.

The largest of the beets have been picked, a few of them pickled.  It would be nice if the little ones left behind take advantage of the space they have to grow now.  Not entirely counting on it, but it would be nice. So many of the tops have been ravaged by leaf miners, I no longer even bother trying to save the good leaves for eating.  Swiss chard is marginally better in that respect; otherwise I would pull it all now.  Hoping that leaf miners die in the fall while beets and Swiss chard keep going.  Full of wishful thinking.

(Almost) everything else, in brief:
Pears are few and small, but acceptable quality
Raspberries are picking up speed
Red bee balm looks tired but could still attract a hummingbird this week
Grapes are hanging on and ripening, despite massive defoliation by leaf hoppers
Peppers, both sweet and hot, are growing green and shiny
Watermelons haven't grown in weeks (the softball-sized one we ate was very nice, though)
Two parsnip plantings are thriving, two not so good
The dominant hue of the red clover flowers is now brown
Basil has been regrowing nicely following severe cutbacks
We have some ugly little cauliflowers.  I might have to double-dog-dare Barry to eat one.

Summer has three weeks to go, officially.  However, September 1 is like New Year's Day for me.  Back to running, back to Toastmasters and clogging, on to music lessons and longer hours at the office.  Gardening season has to wind down, regardless of the weather.

Unsatisfactory, or Tries With Some Success

Counting the garden's blessings last weekend was a good thing to do.  Sometimes the agony of defeat drowns out the the thrill of victory and it gets all my attention.  Nevertheless, there are shortcomings, mistakes, and abject failures that must be acknowledged, not only to give the impression of fair and balanced reporting, but to encourage reflection, atonement, and maybe, just maybe, learning a lesson or two for the sake of future wisdom.

What I'm not so thrilled about in the garden these days:

1.  This scabby excuse for a beet green is the victim of spinach leaf miners.  I knew they were almost inevitable and did mention them just after planting all the susceptible varieties in the same bed where they were attacked last year.  The bed was covered with a white row cover with only a few bird-pecked holes in it.  But I don't know if the miners came in through the holes or had been lying in wait in the soil.  Beets and Swiss chard planted elsewhere in the garden, not under cover, have also fallen victim to this pest.  Still, the plants are vigorous and we have enjoyed an abundance of blemish-free spinach leaves.  So we continue to hope for well-nourished beetroots.

2.  White beans have gone missing.  There were 28 Ina's White Bean seeds in the package.  Three were planted around each of eight poles in one bed and the remaining four at the posts for the shell pea fences.  The latter may have been overwhelmed by cauliflowers and weeds, but the former had no obvious hindrances and no places to hide.  One pole at the top of this picture has no beans, another has one.  What happened?  It seems that most of the others germinated and made it to the surface.  It's unlikely that there were a few duds and they all happened to be planted right next to each other.  A quick web search has just revealed that this could be the work of cutworms.  No direct evidence has been presented, but I'm willing to say "Death to cutworms!" again regardless.  Okay, beans are now to be planted within cutworm collars.  Isn't learning fun?

3.  The biggest parsnip flower is home to an intensive feedlot operation - aphids being the herd, ants being the ranchers.  Having aphids on this flower is not really a problem.  This item could be moved to the "Oh, Gross!" list if I had one.  Last year I had to cut down the big seed parsnip because I couldn't avoid brushing past its umbels and being showered with black ants.  This one is located so as to be easy to avoid touching.  If the ants want to concentrate on the stalks of this plant, which is robust enough to continue producing seeds despite the feasting on its sap, this is fine.  It's a sacrificial plant that isn't making much of a sacrifice.  My main objection to this activity, besides the revolting appearance of it, is its contribution to the health of the ant colony.  Like we need more ants.







4.  Overly heat-sensitive greens get on my nerves.  Very much like that one isolated incidence of frost that needlessly ruins everything, it seems to take only one warmish day to send garden cress or pak choy bolting into a seed-generating frenzy.  Lettuce isn't much better.  Mind you, it has been very warm for about two weeks now, so I could understand if they want to bolt, but this happened some time ago.  We are trying shade cloth on a small patch right now.  Results are inconclusive thus far, though germination and growth are definitely good.  This pak choy is all over the place, growing long seed-bearing branches and dangling them over the adjacent beets and beans.  I trimmed those ones today, thinking that half a million seeds will likely be enough for us.

5.  It's starting to feel like Dry Gulch around here.  Ennio Morricone music plays through my head and I expect to see tumbleweeds bouncing up the alley toward me.  Yesterday's wind left me coated in grit.  And cracks are opening up in exposed soil. This morning I noticed this fissure along a row of young beets.  They weren't doing well to begin with and now their roots have been exposed.  I did my best to fill the crevices with handfuls of purchased topsoil.  It was a tricky operation with the beets clinging tenuously to the side of the the crevasse.  We may have lost a few.  Did this happen because I water them everyday?  But I don't see how they could survive a hot day in the dry hard soil without a little surface moisture added.  Could be the location is just too sunny.  The beets in the big garden get more shade and they look much better.


Only five complaints this evening.  Not bad.

What constitutes a plague?

As the chomping noises get louder and fine black grains of caterpillar excrement cover the ground, the plants, the lawn chairs, and anything we thought we might like to eat outdoors, Trounce begins to look very benign.  Barry gave me a fancy sprayer for my birthday and threw labour into the deal.  He has just come in from smiting the pests on the pear, apple, crabapple, and nanking cherries.  Too bad the sprayer has insufficient range to cover the 40 ft green ash and elm trees which are also being chewed on relentlessly.

Yesterday in the back yard I observed a juvenile robin as it gazed hopefully upward at a caterpillar dangling in a sunbeam just out of reach, maybe descending, maybe not.  So sweet.  So revolting.

Crunch 'n' munch

Several weeks ago Barry told me to go listen to the pear tree.  It was humming with the reassuring sound of honey bees at work.  Yesterday I entered the orchard (the small area next to the carport where our two fruit trees are situated) and heard a different sound, a disturbing one.  To adapt the fine poetry of Clement C Moore to the circumstances at hand:  "And then in a twinkling I heard with alarm, the biting and gnawing of each little worm."  I regret that I couldn't find a good rhyme there, even while misrepresenting the creatures as worms when they are surely caterpillars, though that is just an assumption since they are hidden inside their folded up leaves.

The pear and apple trees both look very sad.  I think the apple should have produced blossoms by now and hasn't because it's under too much stress from being chewed on.  I feel bad about it.  For one thing, the trees needed to be sprayed with a substance detrimental to caterpillars and I didn't get it done in time.  I wonder if a lack of predators could a source of the infestation as well.  Two years ago we acquired a wasp trap that was effective way beyond our expectations.  We then wondered if the death of so many wasps at once could affect the local population.  There were still a few wasp around the next summer, though; the population would recover even if we had affected it.  This spring I hung a Waspinator® imitation wasp nest in the pear tree to guard against wasps making nests in some buried cinder block bricks nearby.  We had a bad experience with such bricks in another location a few years ago.  It did not occur to me that doing this might keep all wasps away from the pear tree and I don't know if that has been the effect.   If this is the cause, I'm at a loss.  We want the wasps for pest control but we won't offer them a place to live.  We would let them nest in our yard if they would promise not to sting us for simply walking past the nest,  But where does one find a Vespo-English dictionary?  Peaceful co-existence with wasps is a tricky business.

My neighbour recommended Trounce® Insecticide and assured me it was biologically safe product.  Today at a garden centre I happened upon this product.  After reading the alarming list of precautions, I put it back on the shelf.  Having since looked up some information on potassium salts of fatty acids and pyrethrum, I begin to think the product might not be so bad after all. But is it too late?

Death to cutworms!

One of the advantages of growing vegetables in containers is that you don't need to worry about cutworms coming along and felling them. When we transplant cucurbits or nightshade vegetables into the ground, each one gets a security perimeter known as a "cutworm collar".  The collar is just an open-ended food can that sticks at least half an inch above the soil surface. I don't know how far the collar should penetrate the soil, but any size of can you can get around the transplant is probably tall enough to keep it safe.

All the melons, peppers and basil went into containers this year, due to my belief that melons and peppers like their roots to be extra warm and that basil would be less at risk of being lost and forgotten among tomatoes and weeds (its usual fate here). Barry did the transplanting and I assured him that cutworm collars were not necessary. This is probably the case if one fills the containers with new sterilized container mix each year. If, however, one just reuses what remains in the container from the prior year (it looked arable), there is a chance that some Noctuid moth dropped an egg or two or a thousand at the site last summer. The morning after the transplant, I noted that in one container the very small basil had disappeared and one of the peppers had been rearranged from an upright structure into a small heap of leaves. My prime suspect was Adventure Cat, the poorly socialized (to humans) tomcat from down the street. He has been known to interfere with our garden. A week later the remaining pepper vanished from the container and I began to think it was an inside job.  We removed the contents of the container scoop by scoop and found the fat little culprit curled up in a horrible grey-brown ball.  There is no picture here because the creature was quickly rendered unidentifiable by Barry's shoe.

Did we immediately surround the other container transplants with cutworm collars?  No.  Foolhardy, maybe, but it doesn't seems so risky if they are all still standing after nine days.  Besides, I'd want to use a fairly large collar (think industrial-sized ketchup can) to avoid damaging spreading roots, and that would result in as much area being inside the barrier as outside.  On which side of the barrier would the cutworm be?  Also, the ill-fated container was the only one in which the contents had been undisturbed prior to planting.  The others had last year's soil, but also some packaged topsoil and peat mixed in, vigorously.  Hard to say if that made the difference.  We'll just hope for the best and be more security conscious next time.

Frost roulette

Tribe's Tobique tomato

The average last frost date for Lethbridge is May 17.  The many websites that consistently provided this information also warned that, of course, the actual date of the last frost is not so consistent.  One should add two weeks just to be sure, or almost sure, that the garden is safe from killer frost for the next three months (Is that all??!!).  Nevertheless,  the weather has been great, and I figured the sooner the baby plants get out of their little pots and into the ground, the faster they will grow.  Two squashes and four tomatoes were selected last weekend to play frost roulette.  Another five tomatoes, two squashes, and a few herbs - cilantro, thyme, nigella, sage - followed a couple of days later.  One fairly cold night I drew the plastic cover over the hoop bed and placed little plastic tents over the tomatoes in other locations.  They looked a bit scary in the morning, but seem to have sustained no permanent damage.  I once heard (once!) somebody say that a plastic covering can promote frost.  Maybe a vapour-permeable cover would have been safer.  I don't know what frost is, or how it works, just that it can maim and kill plants that weren't meant to persist in this climate.  There is another topic for me to research.  A serious gardener should have a working knowledge of frost.

Costata Romana zucchini, in better days

 After a week it doesn't look as if the transplanted tomatoes or squashes are doing any better than their potted siblings.  In fact, the Costata Romana zucchini appears to be done for and the potted cilantro is in better shape that the one in the ground.  Another sixteen days to go to average last frost plus two standard deviations (or however they worked out the additional two weeks safety margin) and then we will see if there was any point to putting these plants at risk.  If early transplantation does make a difference, it might make sense to plant the full garden in early May, if the two-week forecast looks good, and have a full set of back up plants in case the killer frost does happen.  More work, though.  Another kind of backup plan is the one we used last year, when transplanting was done a week before the end of May (because I was going away for a few days and the plants didn't stand much of a chance in  pots) and then it snowed - Greenhaven Garden Centre.

Caution: Worm at work (2010)

Sowing seeds in May isn't scary like doing live vegetable transplants.  Following the demise of all the early cauliflower transplants, a line of cauliflower seeds was sown on the north side of the south pea fence.  It's hard to know if there will be enough room for them; they definitely aren't getting the regulation spacing for their kind.  Last year, the cauliflower and brussels sprouts plants were swarmed by delicate white butterflies and then devoured by their ravenous offspring.  Two inch cauliflowers had developed by October, but overall, it was a bit of a waste of space.  These ones might have to try growing under a shroud of row cover fabric.
In other pest news, the spinach leaf miners are probably quite excited about the upcoming feeding frenzy in the raised bed.  I had finally topped up the soil level in the bed - it had sunk considerably since been built on a bed of uncomposted organic matter some years ago - and sown several rows of spinach family seeds: Kaleidescope and Silverbeet Swiss chard, Detroit Dark Red beets, and Bloomsdale spinach.  Then I looked in The Vegetable Gardener's Bible to see what good companions I might eventually fit between the rows and wished I had done that half an hour earlier.  Above the "good companions" list was "rotation considerations". For all spinach family plants, one should avoid following spinach family plants.  What was I thinking?  The leaf miners know where to look and can't wait for the first leaves to open.  Maybe enough interplanted onions will put them off.  One can hope.

pea - riscope

garden cress

 Yesterday I felt terribly behind on the sowing.  It would be easier if I knew exactly where everything was going to live for the summer.  Sticking with easy decisions, I added two more cages of Schweiserreisen peas, and then more radishes, garden cress, and Black Simpson lettuce next to the existing rows of the same.  Plenty of vacancy in all the garden beds right now, but there are also plenty of reservations.  The time to assign specific accommodations is fast approaching.