Friends and Foes
Ornamental millet ‘Limelight', in a bed with peppers (at right) and Verbena bonariensis. That's the tomato patch in the background.
Not long ago, I found and wrote a brief post about an amazing millet bug – amazing in that it was huge, gorgeous, and something I’d never seen before.
I was hoping somebody would recognize it. So far no luck. Also, at least so far, no one who shares my appreciation of its beauty. Commenters have been silent, but e-mails and conversations with friends have reminded me that for many people, bug = disgusting.
Too bad. Some insects are just plain creepy – earwigs come at once to mind – but a lot of them are drop down gorgeous, however disgusting their behavior.
Read More…
Will these Brandywine blossoms make it to tomatohood if the weather stays hot hot hot?
Our friend Melinda writes:
“It’s been my understanding that when it’s too hot for a sustained period (including high overnight temps–like around 80), that many veggie plants drop their flowers before they fruit (e.g., tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc.). Is that true in your experience?”
Yes, but less often than you might think – or fear, given the ongoing heat wave. High night temperatures sterilize pollen and flowers that are not pollinated fall from the plant. But the window for this kind of blossom drop is comparatively narrow.
Pollen forms before the flower opens, but not that long before, and after the flower opens it must be pollinated within a day or two (over the course of a single morning, in the case of squash), no matter what else is going on.
Read More…
The iridescent green of the head is also in stripes at the joints, so the side view shows a string of jeweled beads
Anybody recognize this creature on the Limelight millet?
First pass at google confirms the likelihood that it is as it appears to be, some kind of stinkbug; they seem to be major pests on millet. But none of the common green and brown ones are anywhere near this large – it’s about an inch long.
Dial “M” for millet, right? It was the only one I saw but I fear it has friends and relatives nearby.
Yes, yes, I know: “for dummies” is just a convenient code that means “for non-experts, in non-technical language,” but if I live to be a million I’ll never understand what’s dumb about wanting that.
part of our Hudson Valley vegetable garden
In Kitchen and Garden has always been In Garden for Kitchen as much as anything else, so there’s a lot about growing vegetables tucked in among the posts about flowers and shrubs, preserves and pastries and architecture and wild mushrooms and coyotes and
where was I?
Giving pointers on food gardening, I think. Here are a few posts that may prove helpful as we teeter on the brink of the 2010 growing season:
Read More…
At least I hope it’s after the snow. Today has been warm right through and sounding like rain, every gutter running, every eve dripping as the compacted layers slowly sink.
After the 1st and 2nd snowfalls, before the 3rd and 4th. That’s a 12 foot ladder
Up until a bit more than a week ago, I was in a pro-snow mood. Seemed like everyone else in the Eastern half of the country was having piles and piles of white beauty, while we had ugly patches of bare brown ground and nothing to ski on.
Be careful what you wish for.
When all is finally revealed, this viburnum will be about half as tall as it used to be. Those three broken leaders were due for pruning but I’d have preferred to choose where to cut without quite so much help.
Read More…
One more misery for this week: The valiant radicchio that made it through multiple nights down to 5 and 6 degrees was no match for the hungry voles, voles no doubt obscenely cosy in the warm double tunnel that was protecting the row. Wretched creatures have gobbled every single head.
Notice the nibbled edges on this baby and the large dark hole where a full sized head used to be.
I haven’t had the heart to look at the row - on the other side of the garden – that I harvested extra carefully and then left covered in hopes of a super-early spring crop. (Cutting the heads off just slightly above the base often results in regrowth, so if the weather is with you – and the voles aren’t – you get a flush of leaves and sometimes a whole new head as soon as the garden wakes up.)
Complete and utter carnage; somehow the scraps where a healthy root should be cause particular pain.
Too late now for the radicchio, but a good reminder to go out and check the viburnums and plums and
Read More…
Is probably impossible, but after losing all the tomatoes in New York, we’re trying to see if at least one of the Maine tomato patches ( 2 outdoors, one under plastic) can pull through and produce.
Organic management tools include:
Fungicide
Fertilizer
Being There
Being Careful
Being Realistic
Being fond of cherry tomatoes
And perhaps most importantly, Being a procrastinator – at least in our case… If I’d done all the tomato grafting I’d planned to do, there wouldn’t have been any leftovers in the greenhouse.
Tomato plants in the greenhouse have so far escaped the blight.
Read More…
are all the wages of a wet summer, but the greatest of these is Late Blight. Our resident mycologist has the scientific perspective – and as he is also our tomato maestro, a very heavy heart. Here is his report on the New York garden, with a full explanation of the disease and how it spreads:
LATE BLIGHT –PHYTOPHTHORA INFESTANS- SWEEPS THROUGH THE NORTHEAST
By Bill Bakaitis
I was in Maine when the word came in: Late Blight was laying waste to tomato fields in the Hudson Valley. Oh, say it ain’t so I pleaded. Leslie and I had been extra cautions this spring in starting from seed, setting out, cultivating, and protecting our tomatoes, fifty or so plants of some twenty or so varieties, mostly open pollinated heirlooms. They were specially grown from selected seed in our own greenhouse and in another in Maine; some heirlooms were painstakingly grafted onto disease resistant rootstock. The spacing was good. The plants were held up by a twine-between-post well-ventilated system, the ground carefully mulched with bright straw over paper, and all the lower branches were removed so as to exclude the transmission of soil borne pathogens. In addition the plants had been treated with Bacillus subtilis (Serenade tm) to protect against fungal infection. Say it ain’t so I prayed as I piled into the car and raced home through a driving rainstorm, thick as I had ever experienced.
But it was so.
Read More…
If only. As a species of aggravation, Marmota monax, the largest and most pestilential member of the squirrel family is impossible to get rid of. There are a number of reasons we will get into in a moment.
First, however, the good news: you can get rid of one or more individuals, and that can often make the difference between having a harvest and not. Furthermore, you can get rid of them using a live trap, especially if you use one from Williams Trapping Supply.
young groundhog in live trap, about to take a trip
Read More…
In Maine, the chilly rain is now bidding fair to be every day for the entire month of June, and it’s not much better in the Hudson Valley. Or not much less rainy, anyway. It IS better there in general because it was warmer longer sooner, giving plants a good head start - and the rain itself is warmer.
I keep telling myself this too shall pass – There’s photographic proof from last July, when Lois was painting in the garden.
There can be so much sun you need an umbrella for that
But it’s difficult for me to listen to me, so I’m glad there are a few things I can do to help avoid total catastrophe.
Read More…
