15 Super Tips for a Productive Summer Veggie Patch!

Asymmetrical Design

Whether you are tucking things into niches between ornamental landscape plants, planting a patio patch like in the image, setting up a first time summer garden patch, or replanning your annual garden, here are some great ideas to increase your production!

1. If you have space, and are creating a back, or front, yard food forest, always start with your tree placements first! Determine which veggies grow well with each kind of tree. Santa Barbara Mediterranean Food Forests

2. Keep in mind veggies need sun! 6 to 8 hours, preferably 8! They are making fruit, and often many! That takes energy.

3.  Put tall plants to the north (see image below), so they won’t shade the shorties. If there is a partially shaded area, plant your tallest plants on the shaded side so they can reach up to get some sun; put the shorter plants in decreasing heights, in front of them so all get as much light as they can. When you are planting rounds, another batch every few weeks, start in the north or the ‘back’ – the shaded area, and work your way forward.

4. Trellises and tall cages are terrific space savers and keep your plants off the ground out of harm’s way – pests, diseases, damage. Your veggies will be clean, and have more even ripening. Cucumbers, beans, tomatoes. Squashes and melons can be trellised if you provide support for heavy fruits. Even Zucchini can be grown up through cages leaving a lot of ground space for underplantings. Harvesting is a lot easier and certain when those fast growing zuchs are up where you can see them!

Inefficient Single Row Planting

5. There are rows and there are rows! Single row planting wastes space! Compare the images. If you do rows, plant 2 or 3 different plants in side by side rows, then have your walk way, then another 2 or 3 plants together. Whether you do 2 or 3, or even 4, depends on plant size, your reach, and ease of tending and harvest. Plant taller or medium size plants, like peppers and eggplant, by twos so you can reach in to harvest. Plant shorter smaller plants like lettuces, spinach, strawberries together since they are easy to reach across to harvest. If plants in the rows are the same size, plant the second row plants on the diagonal to the first row plants. That way your rows can be closer together and you can plant more plants!

Attractive Multi-row Veggie Amphitheatre around the Eden Project restaurant!

6. Rather than rows, biodiversity, mixing things up, confuses pests, stops diseases in their tracks, because they can’t just go from the same plant to the same plant down a row. Since we are not using tractors, there is no need for rows at all, but they can be lovely. The curved rows in the image are behind the Eden Project restaurant outdoor seating! Truly garden to table!

7. If you need only a few plants, rather than designating a separate space for lettuces and littles like radishes, tuck them in here and there on the sunny side under bigger plants! When it gets big enough, remove the sunny side lower leaves of the larger plant to let light in.

8. Plant what you like, and will really eat along with some extra nutritious chards, kales.

9. Plants with the same water needs are good together. Like a salad patch – lettuce, arugula, spinach, bok choy, bunch onions, radish, chards. Putting the things together that you will harvest together saves time! Put carrots at the foot of pole beans.

10. Overplanting can take the fun out of things. Too many zucchini in hot summers, and you are going crazy trying to give away the over large ones you didn’t harvest soon enough. Too many green beans are labor intensive harvesting, takes forever. Planting green beans too close together is hard to harvest, and they mildew more with low air circulation. Overplanting is delicious when you plant lots of lettuces, carrots then harvest what you thin out! That’s baby kales, chard, mini carrots. These are the eat-on-the-spot-in-the-garden types!

11. Traditionally, and if you lived in the North with cold winters, you planted the garden all at once in spring! If your parents did that, you are unthinkingly likely to do it as well. In our SoCal Mediterranean climate, we plant all year though there are warmer and cooler veggie seasons. But each of these seasons are longer, and overlap! It is easy to get 3 plantings in succession IN EACH SEASON! Some plants will grow all year, mostly the ‘winter’ plants in our coastal gardens, for example, beets, broccoli, onions and cabbages. It takes strength to leave open space for successive rounds. But you can do it. Mark that space off, plant temporary fast growers, nitrogen-fixing fava, or lay down some soil feeding mulch like seedless straw. That space will be super productive when its turn comes.

12. Pole plants, have a lot longer production period than bush, like beans! Indeterminate tomatoes are true vines, can last all season long, but are susceptible to Fusarium and Verticillium wilts/fungi diseases. Might be better to plant determinates, limited growth varieties, in succession. That’s plant a few, then in a few weeks a few more, and so on. Let the determinates produce like crazy all at once, pull them when they show signs of the wilts. If you have only a small space available, or want to do canning, then bush plants are for you!

13. Plants that act as perennials in our climate are smart money plants! Broccoli’s for their side shoots, continuous kales and chards.

14. Special needs or companions!

• Eggplants, though heat lovers, love humidity, but not overhead watering. Put them among other medium height plants.
• Basils are great on the sunny sides of tomatoes, and go to table together.
• Corn needs colonies - plant in patches versus rows! Every silk needs pollination because each produces a kernel! The best pollination occurs in clusters or blocks of plants. Consider that each plant only produces 2 to 3 ears, usually 2 good ones. How many can you eat a once? Will you freeze them? The ears pretty much mature within a few days of each other! So, if you are a fresh corn lover, plant successively only in quantities you can eat.

15. Consider herbs for corner, border, or hanging plants. They add a beautiful texture to your garden, are wonderfully aromatic, repel pests! Remember, some of them are invasive, like oregano, culinary thyme. Sage has unique lovely leaves. Choose the right type of rosemary for the space and look you want.

Please be CREATIVE! You don’t have to plant in rows, though that may be right for you. Check out this Squidoo Vegetable Garden Layout page! Check out the Grow Planner for Ipad from Mother Earth News! They may make you very happy! This is a perfectly acceptable way to play with your food.

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Floating Row Covers

Poly Floating Row Cover - slits for daytime ventilation. GreenHouseWorld.com

Have you ever used these?  Why not?!  Your family never did?  The cost factor?  They sound great!  They’re not just for big farmers, you can get them from nurseries and most seed catalogs!  I’m going to give them a try this year.

USES  Use for warming your plants both for starting spring crops early, and to ripen finishing fall fruits.  Use for frost protection, spring and fall.  Keep away harmful insects that eat or lay eggs, spread viruses.  Keep out birds and bunnies.  A caution:  ‘Colorado State University entomologists have found that overwintering insects can be trapped under the covers next to their favorite plants and be ready for action in spring. Some of these insects are tomato hornworm, onion and other root maggots, flea beetles and the [Colorado] potato beetle. Cultivate the soil before planting to reduce the number of surviving insects. Better yet, rotate crops so the survivors do not find their favorite plants nearby.’  OK?

How they work!  If for heat and growth, lay down black plastic mulch for soil warming and weed prevention. Make your slits in the plastic, plant. Put on your row cover. You can put it over hoops, over tomato cages or wires like hardware cloth bent into an arc, tented, or laid right on your plants, installing enough so your plants have room to grow up underneath. Anchor it well so no marauders can walk under or slither in. You can water right through it. Cover a row, or cover your entire raised bed!  If you are using the garden cloth row covers for freeze or grasshopper prevention, don’t let the covers touch your plants.  Since they are good both to keep your plants warmer when planting early, and help with cool weather frosts and freezes, this is one time you can have it both ways! 

They come in lots of varieties – ask questions, shop around.  Select for your needs.  Get a rig that’s easy to lift for tending, and harvesting, especially if you use them to protect your strawberries from birds.

Garden Cloth, easy to install at home using tomato cages - U of Maryland Extention

Insect protection

• The surest way to protect plants from hungry grasshoppers is to cover them with a barrier, such as a floating row cover or lightweight cloth. Be sure to hold the covers above plants with hoops or stakes, because grasshoppers are more likely to eat their way inside if leaves are pushing against the fabric.
• Beets & Chard  Leafminers are the most common pest.  Cover plants with fine netting or cheesecloth or floating row cover to protect them from adult flies.
• Effective in controlling cucumber beetles, squash borer and squash bugs.
• Flea beetles on arugula, cucumber, eggplant, radish.

Double up under the covers!  Plant your main crop you want to protect, interplant with a smaller understory plant on the sunny side!  You might put in some eggplant with arugula and radish interplanted on their sunny side.

Remove and store when no longer needed! 

Lay right on your plants! Burpee.com

Danger of frost is past
The insect’s cycle is over.  Know your insect.
You no longer need more warmth
To allow pollination.  Especially melons, cucumbers and squash, that depend on insects for pollination. 

Sustainable.  Pesticides need to be applied weekly and/or after every rain, but with row covers they can be avoided completely.  Keep your soil clean, and our ocean safe.  Not only that, they save the time it takes to apply any formulas you may concoct, and if you are careful, you can lovingly reuse your row covers!  You can use them several times a year, per weather need, as different plants need protection as insects cycle, and next year too!  This is the best kind of ‘dirty laundry!’

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Mulching/Composting in Place – Some Like it HOT!

I used to be a total mulcher, covered my whole veggie garden.  I’ve adjusted my coastal SoCal mulch* thinking to match the plant!  Same goes for composting in place.  That’s a good idea for some areas of your garden, other areas not at all!

If you are coastal SoCal, in the marine layer zone, your mulch, or composting in place, may be slowing things down a lot more than you realize.  The best melons I’ve ever seen grown at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden were on bare hot dry soil in a plot that had a lower soil level than most of the other plots.  The perimeter boards diverted any wind right over the top of the area, the soil got hot!  It was like an oven!  So, let it be bare!  No mulch under melons, your winter squash, pumpkins.  Put up a low wind barrier – straw bales, a perimeter of densely foliated plants, a big downed log, be creative.  Let your peppers and jicama get hot!  Eggplant is Mediterranean, maybe coastal, because they like a little humidity, but still are heat lovers!  Okra is Southern, hot. Tomatoes need dryer soil to avoid the verticillium and fusarium wilt fungi.  Let ‘em dry nearby, water a foot or more away from the central stem.  Let that tap-root do its job, get the water below the wilt zone, the top 6 to 8 inches.  Drier soil is not comfy for slugs.   Get cucumbers up on a trellis, then you won’t need mulch to keep the cucs clean and bug free, but rather because they have short roots.  Plant heat tolerant lettuces at their feet to act as living mulch.  They both like plenty of water to keep them growing fast and sweet, so they are great companions.  In that case you will need to use a little Sluggo if you feel comfortable to use it.

Closely planted beets, carrots, garden purslane, radish, turnips act as living mulch to themselves.  The dense canopy their leaves make lets little light in, keeps things moist.  If you cage or trellis your beans, most of the plant is up getting air circulation, keeping them dryer, more mildew free, if you don’t plant too densely.  They, and strawberries, also have short feet that need to stay moist, so do mulch them – your beans with clean chop and drop or purchased mulch, your strawberries with pine needles they love.  Chard likes moist and cooler, so mulch.  Zucchini, doesn’t care.  They are a huge leaved plant, greedy sun lovers, that are self mulching.  But, you can do what I do.  Feed them up through the largest tomato cages, cut off the lower leaves and plant a family of lettuces, carrots, onions, salad bowl fixin’s on the sunny side underneath!  All of them like plenty of water, so everyone is happy.

If you are going to mulch, do it justice.  Besides wanting to cool your soil, keep moisture in, prevent erosion, keep your crop off the soil and away from bugs, and in the long-term, feed your soil, mulching is also to prevent light germinating seeds from sprouting.  Put on 4 to 6 inches minimum.  Less than that may be pretty, but simply make great habitat for those little grass and weed seeds!  Mulch makes moist soil, where a rich multitude of soil organisms can thrive, including great fat vigorous earth worms!  You see them, you know your soil is well aerated, doing great!

Mulching is double good on hillsides.  Make your rock lined water-slowing ’S’ terrace walk ways snaking along down the hillside, cover your berms well and deeply to prevent erosion and to hold moisture when there are drying winds.  Plant fruit trees, your veggies under them, on the uphill side of your berms.

If you mulch, make it count!  Mulch with an organic degradable mulch.  Chop and drop disease free plants to compost in place, spread dry leaves.  Spread very well aged manures.  When you water, it’s like compost or manure tea to the ground underneath.  Lay out some seed free straw – some feed stores will let you sweep it up for free!  If you don’t like the look of that, cover it with some pretty purchased mulch you like, maybe redwood fiber.

Build soil right where you need it.  Tuck green kitchen waste out of sight under your mulch.  Sprinkle with a little soil if you have some to spare, that inoculates your pile with soil organisms; compost tea will add some more!  Throw on some red wriggler surface feeder worms.  Grow yarrow nearby so you can conveniently add a few sprigs to your pile to speed decomposition.  It will compost quickly, no smells, feeding your soil excellently!  If you keep doing it one place, a nice raised bed will be built there with little effort!  Do it where you could use a berm for rainwater capture.

You don’t have to wait to plant! Pull back a planting space, add compost you have on hand or purchased, maybe mix in a little aged manure, worm castings, plant specific amendments.  Sprinkle some mycorrhizal fungi on your transplant’s roots, and plant!  Yes!

A caution:  The debris pile of composting in place may be habitat for overwintering insect pests, so put it safely away from plants that have had or might suffer infestations.  To break a pest’s growing cycle, put no piles at all where there have been pests before.

*Mulch is when you can see distinct pieces of the original materials.  Finished compost is when there are no distinct pieces left, the material is black and fluffy and smells good.

Mulch is magic when done right!

Happy Summer Solstice!

Next week, Keeping Your Summer Garden Happy, Foliar Plant Care!

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Tomatoes are the Fireworks of Your Summer Garden!

They really are, aren’t they?!  The most common summer veggie question I get asked is, ‘What’s wrong with my tomatoes?’  So here are reminders, tips to keep your plants healthy and in strong production!  

In areas with wilts in the soil, plant only toms that have resistance or tolerance to the wilts; avoid heirlooms.  Jetsetter, an early season tom, is grand.  Click here for a list of excellent varieties!   

If you have the wilts or blights in your soil  1) Don’t pinch off the lower leaves to plant your transplant deeper!  Those open pinch wounds would then be in the soil where the fungi are.  They say the fungi is taken up by the leaves, but an open wound, in the soil?  NO.  2) Do not pinch out the suckers (the little branches between a big branch and the main stem) as your plant grows because that makes wounds where the airborne fungi can enter your plant.  3) When your plants get taller, DO prune off lower branches that water having soil borne fungi could splash onto.  This is obviously a trade off – no splash on leaves versus wounds open to windborne fungi.  

Do not let plants touch each other and spread the wilts.  

When your plant gets about a foot tall, water around your plant but not at its central stem.  It has a good deep root and can get water below the fungi zone.  Some people simply dry farm toms, especially when they start producing, saying that makes the flavor more intense.  

Keep your soil evenly moist.  It avoids blossom-end rot. 

Rap the tom cage or trellis, central stem, sharply, middayish, to increase pollination!  Not only do you get more tomatoes, but they are the right shape!  More pollination makes more seeds.  Plant plenty of flowering plants for pollinators!  If you want less seeds, let nature take its course – no rapping.  

Temps are crucial!  Tomatoes are not happy when there are 

High daytime temperatures (above 85 F)
High Nighttime Temperatures (above 70 F)
Low Nighttime Temperatures (below 55 F) 

True, tomatoes are heat lovers, but per the University of NV, temperatures over 104 F, for only four hours, causes the flowers to abort!  If you expect high summer temps, plant heat tolerant (“heat set”) varieties:  Florasette, Heat Wave, Solar Set, Sunchaser, Sunmaster, Sunpride, Surfire.   When temps are out of your tomatoes’ happiness range, they abort fruit set and go into survival mode, stop production.  That’s why your plant may make no tomatoes for a period of time.  Don’t think it is a quitter and pull it.  It will start up again when temps lower. 

High nighttime temps are even worse than high daytime temperatures because your plant never gets to rest. 

Conversely, in the spring, wait until nighttime temperatures are reliably above 55 F or protect them with a cover at night.  Choose early maturing varieties like Early Girl, Legend, Matina, Oregon Spring, Polar Baby, Silvery Fir Tree, Jetsetter.

Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes.  What would life be like without home grown tomatoes? Only two things that money can’t buy.  That’s true love and home grown tomatoes. (John Denver)

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Growing UP, 4 High Yield Summer Plants!

From the LA Examiner.com Pasta with fried zucchini, teardrop tomatoes and walnut pesto!

Four of the highest yield summer plants per square foot are indeterminate tomatoes, pole beans, zucchinis, and chard!  Three of these crops can be grown up, on trellises, in cages, so your land need is small.  Chard is prolific, cut and come again all year long!

Tomatoes are classically grown UP!  They have their own little support systems, tomato cages!  Some people trellis them, grow them against the fence, espalier them, even grow them upside down!  At Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden we have two foot diameter cages we build out of two remesh panels – if you are local, drop by to see them on the job!  

We use those same structures for pole beans!  Pole beans love growing on trellises, any kind!  Those simple tripods tied at the top work fine.  Or let them shinny up your sunflower Jack-in-the-Beanstalk style!  I feed them across my remesh panel horizontally so they remain at harvest height!

For zuchs, the easiest thing is to grab the largest strongest tomato cage you have and feed the zuch leaves up though it as your zuch grows! Let some of the outmost leaves stick out so the plant is more open for easier harvesting in the center, air flows to allow cooler conditions to prevent mildews. Cut the bottommost leaves off as the plant gets taller and well foliated, plant other plants underneath! As your zuch vines more, put in another cage, or two, right next to the first one. Let your vine grow right over the top of them, above the other plants already growing there. Put in as many cages as you need as your vine grows.  This is one time when it really doesn’t pay to let your zuchs get huge on the vine, break the plant from their weight, fall on plants below!  Harvest small and salad tender.  If you see one coming, don’t neglect to check on it in a maximum of 2 days.  In prime conditions they are FAST growers!  

If you are growing butternuts/winter squash, or gourds, pop in a well staked sturdy trellis – simplest is remesh 4′ X 7′ panels from Home Depot or OSH, or an arbor. Remesh can be bent whimsically or cut to fit a spot perfectly, or green wire tied together to make cage sizes that suit your needs. Tie your vine, 10′ for squash, 25′ for gourds, to the trellis, or to a southwest facing fence so your squash get plenty of heat and light. Use that flat green garden tie that expands with your plant as your plant grows.  Heavy fruits will need to be supported. Use cloth twine, net veggie bags ie onion bags, old panty hose, old sheets, towels, colorful cloth scraps, parts of old clothes. Have fun with it! 

That said, another ‘vertical’ trick, that doesn’t require tying, is to put up an upside down ‘U’ shaped device. Take one of those remesh panels, or a trellis and lay it over the top of sawhorses or any way you can devise, cinder blocks staked with rebar, whatever you have around. Be sure to support anyplace that needs it so the structure won’t sag. Plant your plants, cucumbers, melons, beans, outside the ends of your ‘arbor’; let them grow up and over. Your fruits will be supported by the remesh or trellis! Don’t make your structure too wide, and make it high enough – you want easy access to tend and harvest other plants that you will grow underneath, like summer lettuces that need a little shade!  Or it can be a kid play place and they will harvest the beans for you! 

Trellises?! Buying them readymade is time saving. Some gardeners would never dream of buying one. They build their own! Some make the simplest, three poles tied together at the top. Others go into fastidious detail and artistic ritual, creating works of beauty! To them, gardening wouldn’t BE gardening without doing that. 

Blessings on your way.  Up you go!

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Protect Your Veggies from Freezing! Cover and tuck ‘em in!

Cold season things to know about your veggies!

• Fertilize.  Healthy plants can withstand more cold.  But. From August on, if you anticipate a cold winter, avoid applying fertilizer with Nitrogen, apply at half your summer rate, until after the last frost, to prevent a flush of tender growth that can be damaged by the cold.
• Cool season crops, such as broccoli, cabbage, peas, and onions, originated in northern areas, and can tolerate frost and light freezes of short durations with little damage, plant cold hardy varieties.  But other tender morsels often die literal black deaths from killing freezes.  Lettuces, your fragrant basil, and peppers are usually the first to go.
• Better taste!  Cool-season vegetables, such as carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, produce their best flavor when they mature during cool weather.  They react to cold conditions and frost by producing sugars, making them taste sweet, especially Brussels sprouts and kale, but also parsnips and leeks!  Ask the folks at the farmer’s market stands if their farms have gotten a frost yet – farms in the country often get frost long before the cities.
• Certain vegetables “bolt,” or produce seed stalks, when there are several days at low temperatures.

Frost we understand, but what’s a Hard Freeze?!  When temperatures drop below 32° Fahrenheit (0° Centigrade) and remain there for several hours, even only 2 hours will do it, typically killing seasonal vegetation. Several hours at 25 to 28 degrees, ice crystals form not only on your plant, but in your plant, damaging the cell walls.  The coldest time of day is  just before daybreak. Clouds at night can absorb and reflect heat back to the earth. Wind can mix the ascending warm air with the descending cold air. Calm, clear nights pose the greatest danger of frost.  Wind:  If it is windy, less worry.  Cold air must settle to form frost and any wind will usually prevent this.  Or, a wind may dry your plants, making them more susceptible to freezing!

Floating Row Cover, Winter Frost Blanket, over Tomato Cages - see how they are staked in place by the cages?

Frost or freeze survival….

• Watch your weather forecast religiously!  Weather has no mercy.
• Water early in the day.  Wet soil insulates and protects roots.  The water warms up during the day and releases heat slowly during the night.  The upper part of a plant may die, but the roots may be strong enough to push up new growth!
• Move frost tender plants under eaves, a spreading tree, into greenhouses, garage.  Key word here is UNDER.
• Haunt yard sales, the thrift shop, for old bed sheets, blankets, tablecloths, curtains, towels, shower curtains, burlap sacks, tarps – many end their lives covering garden plants for frost protection!   Use newspaper with clothes pins so it won’t blow around.  Plastic can be worse than nothing if it touches the plant.  Prop up an unused trellis, get creative!  Use those wire tomato cages to support your covers!  Lay them down among short plants, stand them around taller plants.  At home you can lay out a folding chaise lounge chair, or lawn chairs, and cover them!!  Secure the edges with stakes, rocks, bricks, or cover with soil.  You can use upside down plant pots only if they are large enough that the plant they will cover don’t touch the pot.  Put a rock on top to keep it from blowing over!  That’s called a hot-cap!  The beauty of floating row covers (see image), also called frost or winter blankets, is they can be left in place during the day!  Cover the plants mid- to late-afternoon if possible, before temperatures start to drop.
• Set up windbreaks.
• What you can’t cover, that is not frost hardy, harvest.  Root crops such as carrots and radishes should be harvested or mulched heavily before a hard freeze.

After! 

• If you didn’t cover, wash your plants off before the sun gets on them.  Sometimes that will counteract the freeze burn.
• If you did cover, take the covers off, before the sun hits the beds, so everybody can get their sun quotient for the day!  Winter days are short!
• Dry out your covers, keep them handy.
• Damaged leaves appear dark green and watersoaked at first, later becoming black.  If your plant is totally gone, it’s compost, replace your plant.  Except potatoes!  They will resprout, give ‘em 10 to 14 days!
• Should you trim the ugly damaged stuff off and give your plant a lot of fertilizer to help it?  Whoa, Nelly!  That’s a NO!  The damaged part is protecting the now undamaged part.  If you trim and add a lot of fertilizer, tender new growth will form, and that will be toast if there is another frost or freeze.  Wait to trim until no more frost is predicted, feed lightly.

Was that groaning, whining I heard?  Stop it.  Just go out there and cover your plants, no fooling around, you hear?!  You will be glad you did, it’s your plants’ lives you are saving!  Besides, reviving is harder than covering.  Many will be well past the window for replanting, so cover, cover, cover!  Better to have a yard full of ghosts (sheet covers) and look silly, than lose your plant entirely.

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Three Great FALL/WINTER GARDEN STRATEGIES

Interplant - Lettuce between Cabbages

Interplanting, Cut & Come Again, Winter Watering! 

1)  Interplant!  

Plant peas at the base of your declining beans.  Keep harvesting beans while your baby peas are coming.  When you decide to remove your beans, clip the plant off at the ground, leaving the roots with their nitrogen nodules in the ground.  Onions stunt peas, but carrots enhance peas!  While you are at it, include space to put a row of lettuces at the sunny side of the base of your peas.  The carrot or lettuce foliage will help keep your peas’ feet moist and they like that.  You can harvest both standing in the same spot!  Peas are the only really keep-planting-more  winter crop, and the only really vertical (cages and trellises) winter crop!  Gophers love peas, and carrots, and lettuce, sigh, so I would definitely install protective wire baskets for their root areas before you put up your trellises or cages.  It is such a bummer to lose a producing pea plant. 
  

Your fall garden is going to look sparse when you start because plants like broccoli, kale, collards, cauliflower and cabbages have a big footprint, 1 ½’ centers.  Interplanting slow growers with fast growers between and among is good space usage, reduces weeds, and is downright pretty besides being edible!  The fast growers mature before the larger plants shade them out.  Carrots, though having slow growing roots, grow pretty tops quickly, and they won’t mind being among your Brassicas. 
  

Because your big guys will get big, you may need to leave a dedicated sunny space for your littles – lettuces, radishes, bunch onions, beets, carrots, colorful chards.  But once your Brassicas get bigger, except your cabbages, which will grow low to the ground, cut off the lower leaves on the south, sunny side.  Now you can grow shorter plants under your Brassicas again.   

If you have strawberries that produce most of the year, they are going to need a dedicated sunny space.  Make the space easy to reach for harvesting or plunk a large stepping stone in the center, then start planting around it like a wheel.  Don’t plant too close to the stone, so when you use it you aren’t stepping on your plants’ leaves and fruit.  Don’t plant so far from the stone that you can’t reach to harvest your fruit. 

Larger, Slow Growing Vegetables:  Bulb onions, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peas, parsnip.
Smaller, Fast Maturing Vegetables:  Beets, bunch onions, carrots, kale, lettuce, mesclun, radish, spinach, Swiss chard.    

2)  Cut & Come Again!   Since so many winter plants are cut and come again, there is not as much concern to plant successively, a new round every few weeks or month.  Cabbages planted on the same day just don’t all mature at the same time.  Nature, you know.    

3)  Water less often, deeply, at ground level, not on the leaves.  That reduces soil funguses and foliage mildews, especially on peas.  Harvest dry, water afterwards.  Wash your hands after handling mildewed or diseased plants before working with other plants.

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Tomatoes & Fungi – Growing Great Tomatoes!

What’s happening with my tomatoes?! 

Early Blight,  Fusarium Wilt, Verticillium Wilt,  Late Blight

Tomato - Healthy SunGold!

Tomato - Verticillium Wilt

This?!                                                 Or this?

This is bar none, the most common summer question I get asked! Potatoes, tomatoes, and the various forms of lettuce are the top three favorite vegetables in the US, so you can see why this is THE question!  Since fungi spread as simply as by the wind, I will be campaigning for more tomato plant care, starting with what people can do now to keep the fungi from overwintering, then in the spring to lessen its chances.  There are more things that can be done than I knew!  Read on!

About Fungi   To emphasize the potency of these fungi:  Late Blight of potatoes and tomatoes, the disease that was responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century, is caused by the fungus-like oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans. It can infect and destroy the leaves, stems, fruits, and tubers of potato and tomato plants. Before the disease appeared in Ireland it caused a devastating epidemic in the early 1840s in the northeastern United States.

Not only do the fungi feed on your tomato plants, but take a look at your potatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers and beans!  See those yellowing leaves?  Remove and dispose of them ASAP!  That removes zillions of spores so they can’t spread.  The wilts and blights also affect trees!  Sadly, not only do your plants look depressing, production is zilch, they die an unnatural death.  Remove, replace.  Be happy.

How do fungi work?  Spores are spread by rain/watering splash, insects, and wind, and through our hands and tools (wash your hands and tools after handling infected plants) and through these mediums, can travel distances.  That’s why it is so important, in our community garden, to tend our plants, so our neighbors’ plants won’t also be infected.  Educate your plot neighbors, better yet, send this to them!  Spore spread is most rapid during conditions of high moisture, marine layer days, and moderate temperatures (60°-80°F).  Once established, the fungi can over winter in your garden on debris and weeds.

What they look like on your plant: 

Tomato - Early Blight

Tomato - Verticillium Wilt

14 Fungi Preventions!

Cultural control practices alone won’t prevent disease during seasons with wet, cool weather. However, the following measures will improve your chances of raising a successful crop.

Things you can still do this season!**
Things you can do now to prepare for next season!**

1. Buy toms that are tagged VFN, or just VF – that’s Verticillium Wilt and Fusarium resistant or tolerant. Varieties that set fruit early, at lower temps, are Early Girl Improved, Fourth of July, Enchantment. Excellent resistant varieties are Champion, Husky Red, Better Boy, Ace Hybrid, Celebrity.
    
2. Plant only healthy-appearing tomato transplants. Check to make sure plants are free of dark lesions on leaves or stems. If starting transplants from seed, air-dry freshly harvested seed at least 3 days.
    
3. Remove volunteer tomatoes and potatoes.  If they are a not a resistant or tolerant variety, when they get sick, they increase the chances of your resistant varieties having to fight harder to live, and your good plants may not win the battle.  Do not let volunteers grow, even on compost piles, cute as they are. Infected tomato refuse should be put in the trash.
    
4. **Create a soil barrier, mulch!  You can use newspaper, plastic, grass clipping or anything you wish. You want to create a splash barrier. Seal the soil and you reduce the chances of spores finding your plant. I suggest using a layer of newspaper/cardboard covered with mulch or grass clippings. Bottom line, you don’t want your soil to contact your plant.
    
5. **Avoid wetting foliage when watering, especially in late afternoon and evening. Water at the ground!  Watering the leaves creates a humid micro climate; the fungus produces spores. Dry leaves. Dry leaves. Dry leaves.  No moisture, no spores.
    
6. **Air circulation, plant staking and no touching. Air circulation allows the wind to blow through your plants. This allows the timely drying of leaves and it helps break up micro climates. If your plants are packed too tightly together, they themselves become barriers to drying. Staking your plants to poles and using cages helps them grow upright and it creates gaps between the tomato plants. You want to wind and sun to reach through and around your plants. Moisture is needed for fungi to spread. Dry is good. Tomatoes should be planted with enough distance that only minor pruning is needed to keep them from touching each other.
    
7. **Spray proactively. Wettable sulfur works.  It is acceptable as an organic pesticide/fungicide, is a broad spectrum poison, follow the precautions. It creates an environment on the leaves the spores don’t like. The key to spraying with wettable sulfur is to do it weekly BEFORE signs of the disease shows. Other products also help stop the spread. Whatever you select, the key is to spray early and regularly.
    
8. **When they are about a foot tall, water neighboring plants, but not your toms.  That keeps the soil drier near your plant, so the fungi can’t thrive there.  Your tomatoes will get plenty of water from their deeper roots.
    
9. **Remove bottom leaves, again, no touching (the ground), and prune your plants.  Barbara Pleasant at Mother Earth News says, ‘When the lowest leaves are removed just as the first leaf spots appear, you also remove millions (zillions) of spores. And, because the bases of pruned plants dry quickly, the spread of the disease is slowed because early blight fungi need damp leaves in order to germinate and grow.’  Create an 18 to 24 inch barrier gap or safe space between your garden soil or mulch and the first leaves of the tomato plant. If the spores can’t splash upwards and reach the leaves, they can’t take hold. The stem usually isn’t a place for the spores, though it can be. Best is to remove the bottom leaves before the spores start!If you have large plants, you might consider cutting off some branches to let the sun and wind blow through the main body of your tomato plant.  But, some gardeners don’t recommend pruning or snipping the suckers, the mini branches formed between the trunk and branches, because spores can enter through these cuts.  If you decide to prune, the less cuts the better.  Prune on hot, dry, unwindy days, mid morning to midday, after dew has dried, so cuts can dry and heal with less chance of airborne fungi getting into them.  Try not to touch the cuts after they have been made.  Use clippers for a clean cut.
    
10. **Remove infected leaves immediately. A leaf should be completely green. Look for brown spots or yellow spots or distress. Remove leaves and prune when it is dry and sunny, not windy. Wash your tools and hands often.
     
11. After the tomatoes set, add some nitrogen. A healthy plant tends to fight off the spores. You don’t want to add too much nitrogen to your tomatoes before they set fruit. Too much nitrogen before fruiting leads to more leaves and less fruit. Add N only once.
     
12. **Rotate your crop if possible. Because fungi also affect other plants, rotation in small gardens isn’t practical or even possible. But if you have the room, move your tomatoes to areas that are fungi free.
     
13. ****At the end of the season remove, don’t compost, all infected debris and surrounding debris. Pull all the weeds because spores can over winter on weed hosts. You want to reduce the number of spores laying in wait.
     
14. **The spores aren’t super spores. During our winter season, turn your soil about 10 inches, burying the spores helps remove them, and it also exposes snail eggs to die.

Favas are a ‘Fungicide!’
Year-round Backyard Mini-Farming: Food with the Least Fossil Fuel and Footprint
Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, PASA Conference Workshop, Saturday Feb. 6, 2010
Gene Bazan, Ph.D. and Tania Slawecki, Ph.D   http://neo-terra.org/PASA2010.aspx

Many years ago I introduced a diseased Early Girl tomato plant I purchased at a greenhouse. Unknown to me, it had verticillium wilt. I thought the wilted look was just due to dry conditions, but didn’t think much about it. I composted the debris, and unwittingly used the diseased compost in the following year’s tomato bed. That year I lost 3/4 of our tomatoes to wilt. I then took a diseased plant to the pathology lab at Penn State, and got the diagnosis. I remembered that Jeavons wrote that fava (bell) beans counteract wilt, so the next year I planted fava beans in early April, and put the same tomato varieties in the same bed. Mortality dropped to 1/4th. Since that time, we always precede tomatoes with bell beans. We have reduced wilt even further.

If you have missed the usual SoCal Sep to Nov fava planting window, do as Gene and Tania did, plant favas and tomatoes at the same time!  Next fall decide where you will plant your following summer’s toms and put in a patch of favas then and there!  Plant your toms, as usual, starting in March.

Water your plants with an aspirin?!  Salicylic acid, in aspirin, triggers a defense response in tomatoes and other plants as well!

Adapted from eHow:  The main benefit of aspirin in planting involves aspirin’s ability to fend off potential plant diseases.

1. Purchase regular strength aspirin. The brand does not matter; purchase the cheapest brand that is available.
2. Mix together one aspirin with one gallon of water. Combine the ingredients well, so that the aspirin is distributed evenly throughout the liquid.
3. Add a dash of mild liquid soap to the mixture. This is used as a way to help the aspirin water stick better to the tomato plants. Once the soap is added, attach a spray nozzle to the gallon jug and it is ready to use.
4. Spray the tomatoes when you first set them in the ground. Aspirin sprayed directly on seeds improves germination, on plants it stimulates the growing process. There is no need to soak the area. A light and gentle spray will suffice.
5. Continue to spray the aspirin mixture on the tomato plants every 2 to 3 weeks. You are going to notice that the plants stay healthier and attract fewer insects.

Per a comment by Leroy Cheuvront at Heavy Petal blog:  I have had the blight and have stopped it from destroying my tomato plants. All you have to do is mix 2 ounces of bleach to a gallon of water and drown the plant from top to bottom, it will not kill the plant. I do it every seven days and the blight has not returned.  — June 18, 2010.  It sounds scary, but I bet it works! I would test this principle on ONE plant to be sure it is safe to use.

Solarization  In the past ten years, some enterprising Israelis came up with solarizing. Moist soil is covered with transparent plastic film for four to six/eight weeks in the summer.  It takes that long to heat the soil to a temperature and depth that will kill harmful fungi, bacteria, nematodes, weeds, and certain insects in the soil. Solarization can be a useful soil disinfestation method in regions with full sun and high temperatures, but it is not effective where lower temperatures, clouds, or fog limit soil heating. Solarization stimulates the release of nutrients from organic matter present in the soil.

Solarization

Solarization also kills grass by heating up the soil when daily temperatures exceed 80°F. Weed eat or mow the area as short as possible. Moisten the soil and cover the area in clear plastic for 10-14 days, until the grass is dead.     Although cloudy weather will slow things down by cooling the soil under the film, a few weeks of sunshine will improve your soil dramatically, easily, and inexpensively. If you live in an area with cool or cloudy summers, or if you just don’t want to wait all season, you can speed up the process by adding a second sheet of plastic. Using the hoops commonly used to elevate row covers or bird netting, raise the second sheet of plastic over the ground-level sheet. The airspace between acts as a temperature buffer zone during cloudy weather and the combination of the two sheets of plastic serves to raise the soil temperature an additional 6 degrees.  The goal is to raise and maintain temperatures in the top 6 inches of soil to a level between 110 to 125 degrees F.  After several days of sunshine, soil temperatures rise to as high as 140 degrees at the surface and well over 100 degrees as far down as 18 inches.

Do not mix untreated soil into the solarized bed

And please, do NOT compost diseased tomatoes, or any other diseased plant.  That’s how you spread soil born fungi, let alone that they are also spread by wind, are airborne.  If your neighbor has a diseased plant, don’t be shy to respectfully and gently ask them to remove it.  Remember, they raised that child.  How hard was it for you to give up your plant?  Especially the first time.  See?  They may not even know about wilts.  Educate them if possible.  Tell them how you learned about it.  Offer to send them the link to this page.

See also Biofumigation  Biofumigation is a sustainable strategy to manage soil-borne pathogens, nematodes, insects, and weeds. Initially it was defined as the pest suppressive action of decomposing Brassica tissues, but it was later expanded to include animal and plant residues. 

Other Tomato Questions & Cures – Holes, spots, brown areas?  Here is an IPM (Integrated Pest Management) image page from UC Davis that is likely to answer your question!  It includes diseases and pests.  See more images at Colorado State U Extension.

Marion Owen, Fearless Weeder for PlanTea, Inc. and Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul says ‘Keep your hands in the dirt, and your dreams on a star!’  I agree!

To the fattest, bestest tomatoes ever!!!!
Cerena

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