What’s a garden for? Fertility and good living! Bridgette and Hoyt got married on a supermoon evening at Lyons Farmette & River Bend, Lyons CO! How fine.
June is Midsummer Magic month! Divine small Faery beings will be celebrating your garden!
June 21, 24, 25 or a date close to the Summer Solstice, any day June 19–24, is celebrated as Midsummer Night; June 24 is Faery Day! In Santa Barbara the 2022 magical 48th Summer Solstice Parade will be IN PERSON June 25!
Tasty, beautiful and inspirational May garden images at Rancheria Community Garden, Santa Barbara, CA, show how our weather has been and what’s growing! Plant more rounds for a steady table supply!
Abundance is flowing, harvests are happening!
In our area, near the beach in Santa Barbara, we have been having coolish May grays, low morning clouds, some heavy mists, with warm sunny weather predicted soon! Zucchini, cucumbers and lettuces of all kinds are being eaten. Sizable Bell peppers are on board and small Banana, Anaheim and hot Peppers coming; humongous Seascape strawberries are here and tasty! Beans are blooming. BUT, the 25th I saw the first western striped cucumber beetle. BAD news, a vector for bacterial wilt and mosaic virus! Please – very carefully read the info in Pests below and the link about them there. Be careful with some of your harvests. Clip rather than break away and damage or pull your plant up.
Tomatoes are on the plants. Small Cherry tomatoes come in first. Fertilize your toms with a slow release fertilizer, like alfalfa pellets, once the fruiting begins. See the Summer Feeding Schedule for all your favorites!
I have had the pleasure of growing Pink Boar Tomatoes, from the Wild Boar series bred by farmer/breeder Brad Gates. As High Mowing says, ‘Deep pink skin is stunning with contrasting olive stripes and luscious deep red flesh,’ and it was!
Unexpected benefit! Reviewer Rebecca of Old Mosses Secret Garden said: I bought [Brad Gates Blue Berries] tomatoes for my whimsical choice. My experiences were similar to others opinion, they are abundant, vigorous and salad enhancing, plus they make a wonderful antioxidant jam spread. What I wanted to share about the blue berry tomatoes is that they are top of the menu choices for BATS. Bats were not on our urban radar, four years later five thousand bats have moved in and troll the garden where the fence lines are abundant with these little tasty gems, which get devoured. This plant is the greatest organic gardening boon ever sprouted. For fair reveal though I have hundreds of evergreen spruce that also get bat vacuumed for more meaty choices, so Thank you Baker seed, your diligence to excel is my secret weapon for a fantastic garden.
Harvest at your veggie’s peak delicious moment! Juicy, crunchy, that certain squish in your mouth, sweet, full bodied flavor, radiant, vitamin and mineral rich! Besides being delicious and beautiful, it keeps your plant in production. Left on the plant, fruits start to dry and your plant stops production, goes into seeding mode. The fruit toughens or withers, maybe rots, sometimes brings cleanup insect pests that spread to other plants. Keep beans picked, no storing cucumbers on the vine. Give away or store what you can’t eat. Freezing is the simplest storage method for many veggies. Cut veggies to the sizes you will use, put the quantity you will use in baggies, seal and freeze. Whole tomatoes, chopped peppers, cut beans, diced onions. Probiotic pickle your cukes. Enjoy your sumptuous meals! Sing a song of gratitude and glory!
Plant more! Try some new ones too!
In those empty spots you have been saving, plant more rounds of your favorites! Check your lettuce supply. Put in more bolt resistant, heat and drought tolerant varieties now. Some heat tolerant lettuce varieties are Sierra, Nevada, Jericho, Black Seeded Simpson. That ruffly little beauty queen Green Star has excellent tolerance to hot weather, bolting, and tipburn. Rattlesnake beans keep right on producing when temps get up to 100 degrees! Plant more of everything except winter squash, big melons, pumpkins, unless you live in the hot foothills.
Put in plants that like it hotter! Long beans grow quickly from seed now. They grow later in the season when your other beans are finishing. They make those enormously long beans in the ample late summer heat. Keep watch on them, in spite of their size they grow quickly. Harvest promptly, usually daily! Certain varieties of them don’t get mildew either! Their unique flavor keeps your table interesting. Plant Okra now, it grows quickly in this warmer weather! More eggplant and also tomatoes you have been waiting to put in the now drier fungi free ground. Plant mini melons like Sugar Baby watermelons!
For those of you that are plagued with fungi diseases in your soil, the drier soil now makes this a better time to plant. Select wilt and blight resistant Tomatoes. Remember, when you plant your tomatoes and cukes, build a mound and make a basin whose bottom is higher than the surrounding soil. You want drainage and a wee bit of drying to reduce the potential of fungi – verticillium and fusarium wilts, blights. They have deep roots, so water nearby plants but not your Tom! More Special Planting and growing tips for your Tomatoes and Cucumbers!
Companion Planting Teamwork!
Plant WHITE potatoes with Zucchini to repel squash bugs, radishes with cukes and Zucchini to repel cuke beetles, and radishes with eggplant, potatoes and arugula to repel flea beetles.
If you have more space or you lost a plant here or there, think on putting in some perfect companion plants! One of the Three Cs are super!
- Calendula – so many medicinal uses, bright flowers, and traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips! Yep. Plant Calendula by tomatoes and asparagus.
- Chamomile – is called the Plant Dr! It heals neighboring plants and improves the flavor of any neighboring herb! The flowers make a lovely scent and the tea is sweet.
- Comfrey – aka Knitbone, is an amazing medicinal herb, a super nutritious compost speeder upper! Plant it by your compost area, but remember, it has a large footprint, and easily spreads! I planted mine in 5 gallon containers with the bottoms removed. It likes a LOT of water! UK gardeners make Comfrey Tea for their Tomatoes!
Tasty herbs – chives, parsley, or more permanent perennials like rosemary, oregano (invasive), thyme are flavorful choices that often repel pests.
Hot Peppers emit a chemical from the plant roots that helps prevent Fusarium wilt, root rot, and a wide range of other plant diseases! Interplant them with susceptible plants.
Pat Mycorrhiza fungi right on the roots of all your transplants except Brassicas. It increases uptake of nutrients, water, and phosphorus that helps roots and flowers grow and develop. Ask for it bulk at Island Seed & Feed in Goleta. Support your local nurseries.
Here’s your tending list for Beauty and Bounty!
WATER regularly so everyone is moist the way they like it! Seeds and seedlings daily, even 2 to 3 times daily on super hot/windy days. Shading them may save their lives. Peppers like moist, so as they need it. Others not so water critical on average need an inch a week; water beans, cukes, lettuces and short rooted varieties of strawberries more frequently – lettuces could be daily on hot windy days. To double check use the old finger test or push your shovel in and wedge the soil open enough so you can see if it is moist as deep as it needs to be. Watering at ground level, rather than overhead watering, keeps your plant dry. That means less mildew, less fungal diseases, especially for fuzzy leaved plants like toms and eggplant. They don’t like water on their leaves. See Growing Super Veggies in HOT, Drought, Desert Areas! for further considerations.
If at all possible, water in the AM before 10:30 to let leaves dry before evening to prevent mildew – beans, cucumbers and squashes are especially susceptible. Plant fewer beans further apart for air flow. If your plants are near a street or there has been a dusty wind storm, wash the dust off your plants so they can breathe, and to make them less attractive to Whiteflies.
Some plants need MULCH now, and if the mulch is tired and flat, replace it with fresh clean mulch. No more than an inch of straw mulch under toms and cukes. They need airflow so the soil can dry a bit and reduce harmful fungi. Otherwise, put on 4 to 6 inches minimum to keep light germinating seeds from sprouting. Mulch any Brassicas you are over summering – broccoli, kale – 4 to 6 inches deep for them too. They need cool soil. Melons and winter squash – Butternuts, acorn, pumpkins – need heat! They are the exception – no mulch for them if you are coastal cool. Yes, they are a big plant/vine, they will need more water, so be sure their basin is in good condition and big enough so they get water out to their feeder roots. Put a stake in the center of the basin so you know where to water when the leaves get big. The only place for straw for them is right under the melons. See more at Mulching ~ Why, When, With What, How Much?! If you are in hot foothills, mulch away!
Surface Feeder Roots are vital! Near the soil surface, they have access to water, nutrients, and oxygen. These elements are more abundant near the soil surface than deep within the soil. Most of a plant’s feeding is near the surface by the horizontal surface feeder roots. They must have water to pickup nutrients the plant needs. In this video, notice how much more root surface is near the soil surface versus the deep central roots! This is why you don’t want to break these roots when you cultivate, surface feed, sidedress your plants. Rather than circling your plant destroying its ability to feed, slowing, stunting it, putting it in recovery rather than production mode, instead, do only a couple small portions of area if necessary. Better is to foliar feed your plant, then, additionally, on the soil surface, add worm castings and a light layer of manure, cover with compost, cover all with mulch to keep your additions moist and from washing away. Gently water in.
Kidney bean time lapse 25 days|soil cross section. Showing how roots and upper part of plant grows Please also enjoy the comments!
Keep a sharp eye on tomatoes. If your soil has fungi, that’s wilts or blights, immediately remove leaves touching the ground or will touch the ground if weighted with water! Trim so neighboring plants don’t touch and spread diseases. Remember, the wilts are spread by wind as well as water, so neighboring plants are very likely to give it to one another. Try planting other plants between, especially HOT peppers! See Companions above. You can still do rows, just mix up the plants! Your healthier tomatoes will produce more, bigger toms, and longer.
POLLINATION is vital & easy to do!
Hand Pollination of Cucurbits! In left image, male flower on left, female right.
Improve your tomato, eggplant and pepper production by giving the cages or the main stems a few sharp raps, or gently shake the stems, to help the flowers self pollinate. Midday is the best time. Honey bees don’t pollinate tomatoes, or other Solanaceae! Build solitary bee condos for native bees. Native bees, per Cornell entomology professor Bryan Danforth, are two to three times better pollinators than honeybees, are more plentiful than previously thought and not as prone to the headline-catching colony collapse disorder that has decimated honeybee populations. The very best Solanaceae pollinator is a Bumblebee!!! See more! Plant plenty of favorite bee foods, especially ones with purple and blue colors, their favorites!
While you are helping your tomatoes pollinate, if you are growing them in cages, also very gently help them up through the cages. Remove any bottom leaves that might touch the ground when weighted with water. Remove any diseased leaves ASAP! Do NOT put them in compost! Bag and trash.
Squashes, melons and monoecious cucumbers can easily be hand pollinated. Cukes are notorious for needing help being pollinated! Cucurbits have male and female blooms on the same plant. If there are not enough pollinators about, we need to help. Also, multiple visits from the bees are required for good fruit set and properly shaped cucumbers. Male flowers open in the morning and pollen is only viable during that day. Hand pollinate during the morning hours, using only freshly opened flowers. You can use a small pointy paint brush, a cotton swab, Q-tip, your finger, and move pollen from the male stamen to the center of the female flower. Or the best, most complete method is to take the male flower off the plant, pull the petals off, and gently roll the male flower anther around and over the female stigma in the center of the female flower. The pollen is sticky, so it may take some time. One male anther can pollinate several females. Repeat. Female blooms will simply drop off the plant if they are not pollinated or not pollinated adequately. So when your cukes are in production, you need to do this daily for more fruits.
Don’t be confused by the little fruit forming under the female flowers and think pollination has already happened. The flower needs to be fertilized, and adequately, or the fruit just falls off. Flowers not pollinated enough, that don’t abort, make misshapen fruits. That goes for corn having irregular to lacking kernels. Strawberries are called cat-faced. Squash and cucumbers can be deformed. On an unwindy day, tilt the stalk so the corn tassels are over the silks and tap the stalk. You will see a shower of pollen fall on the silks. You may need to do it from one plant to another so you don’t break the stalk trying to get the pollen to fall on silks on the same plant.
Planting a lot of plants close together stresses the plants. At higher densities, plants compete for water, nutrients, and sunlight, and the resulting stress can lead to a higher proportion of male flowers, less female flowers, the ones that produce. If you really want more fruit, give them room to be fruitful. The same goes for other stresses – damage from insects or blowing soil, low light intensities, or water stress – less female flowers are produced.
Weather affects pollination. Sometimes cool overcast days or rain, when bees don’t fly, there is no pollination. High humidity makes pollen sticky and it won’t fall. Not good for wind pollinated veggies like tomatoes. Drought is a problem for corn pollination. Too high nighttime temps, day temps 86°F and above, will keep your tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables from setting fruit unless they are high temp tolerant varieties. Too windy and the pollen is blown away. See Pollination: Honeybees, Squash Bees & Bumblebees!
If it is your cucumbers that are not pollinating well each year, try parthenocarpic varieties. Parthenocarpic varieties produce only female flowers and do not need pollination to produce fruit. This type of cucumber is also seedless. Try a few varieties and see if you like them.
Did you know? Flowers can hear buzzing bees—and it makes their nectar sweeter!
SIDEDRESSING! This IS the time! Feeding when your plants start to bloom and produce is a pretty standard recommendation. But if your baby is looking peaked, has pale or yellowing leaves, an emergency measure could be blood meal. Foliar feeding a diluted fish emulsion/kelp is easy for your plant to uptake. Foliar feeding a tea mix per what each plant might need, is the ultimate feed and it’s not hard to make tea mixes! Your lettuces love it if you scratch in a 1/4″ chicken manure, but no manure in a tea on leaves you will be eating! Pull your mulch back, top with some tasty worm castings, that light 1/4″ layer of manure, cover with a 1/2 – 1″ of compost. If you prefer organic granulated fertilizer, easy to apply, sprinkle it around evenly. But remember, that has to be repeatedly applied. Recover with your mulch, straw, then water well and gently so things stay in place. That’s like making compost and worm tea in place!
Face up to pests! It’s easier to deal with them when there are only a few rather than losing your whole plant or a row of plants. This is the time you will see Cucumber beetles foraging on Cucumber, zucchini flowers, on Tomatillos. They are deadly to cucumbers because they transmit bacterial wilt and squash mosaic virus and cucumbers are the most susceptible to the wilts than any other garden veggie. Squish those beetles. Put one hand under where the beetle is, reach for it with the other hand. Be prepared! They are fast and can see you coming! See more Here are tips for Beetle prevention for organic gardeners:
- If possible plant unattractive-to-cucumber beetle varieties. In 2012 U of Rhode Island trials, best pickling choices are Salt and Pepper and H-19 Little Leaf. Marketmore 76 was tops for slicing cukes. If you find more current research on best varieties, please let me know!
- Plant from transplants! The youngest plants are the most susceptible.
- Interplant! No row planting so beetles go from one plant to another.
- Delay planting! In our case, most of us already having planted cucumbers, can plant another round late June or when you no longer see the beetles. Start from seeds at home now since transplants may no longer be available in nurseries later on.
- Plant repellent companion plants BEFORE you plant your cukes. Radish with eggplant, cukes & zukes act as trap plants for flea beetles and to repel cucumber beetles. Radish are the fastest growers, so get them in ASAP if you didn’t before.
- Natural predators are Wolf Spiders, daddy long legs and Ground Beetles! Let them live! They eat beetle eggs and larvae. And there is a tachinid fly and a braconid parasitoid wasp that parasitize the striped Western cucumber beetle, and both sometimes have a large impact. When you see a dark hairy fly, don’t swat it! It is doing important garden business!
- Here is a super important reason to use straw mulch! Per UC IPM ‘Straw mulch can help reduce cucumber beetle problems in at least 3 different ways. First, mulch might directly slow beetle movement from one plant to another. Second, the mulch provides refuge for wolf spiders and other predators from hot and dry conditions, helping predator conservation. Third, the straw mulch is food for springtails and other insects that eat decaying plant material; these decomposers are important non-pest prey for spiders, helping to further build spider numbers. It is important that straw mulch does not contain weed seeds and to make certain that it does not contain herbicide residues which can take years to fully break down.’
- Organic mulches foster diverse populations of beneficial soil microorganisms that trigger the plant’s internal defenses.
- At the end of the season or when your plants are done, remove garden trash, tired mulch and other debris shortly after harvest to reduce overwintering sites.
If you are by a road or in a dusty windswept area, rinse off the leaves to make your plants less attractive to whiteflies. Also, asap remove yellowing leaves that attract whiteflies. Pests adore tasty healthy plants just like we do. They also make us see which plants are weak or on their way out. Give those plants more care or remove them. Replace them with a different kind of plant that will do well now and produce in time before the season is over. Don’t put the same kind of plant there unless you have changed the conditions – enhanced your soil, installed a favorable companion plant, protected from wind, terraced a slope so it holds moisture, opened the area to more sun. Be sure you are planting the right plant at the right time! Remove mulch from under plants that were diseased and replace with clean mulch. Do not compost that mulch or put it in green waste. Bag and trash it.
Please always be building compost and adding it, especially near short rooted plants and plants that like being moist. Compost increases your soil’s water holding capacity.
Reduce your carbon footprint! Grow local!
Mary Alice Ramsey in her North Carolina backyard. Photo by Hector Manuel Sanchez
May You enjoy a super beautiful, bountiful and a juicy June!
Updated annually
Check out the entire June 2023 Newsletter!
Peppers, HOT or Not!
Veggie Feeding Schedule for Your Delicious Summer Favorites!
Container Gardening, Garden Anywhere!
Vacation, Super Busy?! Self Watering Systems!
Special Treat! Sweet Summer Magic: Solstice Honey Cookies!
Upcoming Gardener Events: Santa Barbara’s 49th Summer Solstice Parade June 24, ROOTS! July 21 & 22 43rd Annual Seed Savers Exchange Conference! Reminder! Get lodgings for the 10th Annual National Heirloom Exposition, Ventura CA Sep 12-14! Don’t miss this superlative event!
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Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!
The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both of Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!
In our area, near the beach in Santa Barbara, the weather has been so cool and cloudy that tomatoes are barely coloring up. However, their sidekick basil is potent delish, Zucchini and lettuces of all kinds are being eaten. Some gardeners are eating first beans. Peas, cool temps lovers, are still producing well! Haven’t seen any cukes even blooming yet, BUT, the 30th I saw the first western striped cucumber beetle. BAD news, a vector for bacterial wilt and mosaic virus! Please – very carefully read the info in Pests below and the link about them there. Bell peppers are budding, humongous Seascape strawberries are here and tasty! Be careful with some of your harvests. Clip rather than break away and damage or pull your plant up.
Water regularly so everyone is moist the way they like it! Seeds and seedlings daily, even 2 to 3 times daily on super hot days. Shading them may save their lives. Peppers like moist, so as they need it. Others not so water critical on average need an inch a week; water beans, cukes, lettuces and short rooted varieties of strawberries more frequently – lettuces could be daily on hot windy days. To double check use the old finger test or push your shovel in and wedge the soil open enough so you can see if it is moist as deep as it needs to be. Watering at ground level, rather than overhead watering, keeps your plant dry. That means less mildew, less fungal diseases, especially for fuzzy leaved plants like toms and eggplant. They don’t like water on their leaves.
Tomatoes are coloring up nicely, their sidekick basil is potent delish, golden zucchini and lettuces of all kinds are being eaten, purple pole beans harvested by adults and children! I’ve seen some big fat full size cukes and humongous Seascape strawberries! Be careful with some of your harvests. Clip rather than break away and damage or pull your plant up.
Green Bean Connection 