Mid-June Garden To Do List

Here is a quick list of things that need done in our June garden.  Keep in mind that we're located in Spring Hill, TN in a zone 6b-7 area and these chores may not correspond with the growing season in your area.  You'll need to do many of these tasks too but at different times.

• Sucker those tomatoes!  Removing the suckers focuses growth on the other stems which allows for larger fruiting.  
• Pinch the tip growth on basil to keep a bushy plant growing.  Every pinch of the leaves at the growing tip will send growth hormones down into the stems to encourage other branches to grow. (See more on growing basil here.)
• Sequentially plant squash and zucchini.  My crop of zucchini has been nibbled on by deer.  I've covered them but the damage was done and our crop will be delayed.  Starting new seeds will ensure a second crop after the first one has succumbed to various insects or pests.
• Get the spaghetti and acorn squashes planted.  Winter squashes are great squashes for storing and can last a couple months if stored right in a cool place.
• Pruning of many overgrown plants needs done.  My viburnums have gotten very large and I've had to trim the arrowwood viburnum several times already just to maneuver around it.  The long straight branches of the arrowwood viburnum makes pretty good stakes for small plants.  I have some boxwoods that need pruned back as well but I've been waiting for the branches to mature enough for cuttings.  
• Continue regular weeding.  The days are getting hotter so early mornings and evenings become the preferred times for weeding.  
• Irrigate as needed.  We've had decent rains this June (when compared to last June - record heat and low rainfall) and irrigation of my vegetable garden hasn't been necessary but that could change at any time.  
• Continue to propagate plants for the garden!  I haven't done as much plant propagation this year as I have in the past but there are quite a few plants I want to propagate.
• Redo garden beds.  There are several beds that need some major renovations including the one around the deck and the birdbath garden.
• Continue watching for pests in the vegetable garden.
• Harvest!  Yellow squash has been coming along nicely and soon there will be tomatoes...I can't wait!

What's on your to-do list?

A Few Facts and Tips about Growing Basil

Corsican Basil

Basil (Ocimum basilicum) is one of the easiest herbs to grow. Here are a few growing facts about basil in the garden!

Dark Opal Purple Basil

• Basil grows well from seed.  You can sow it in the garden or start the seeds in pots.  It transplants well.  Keep basil seeds moist until germinated and established.
• Basil is a great companion plant to just about everything.  My favorite companion planting combination with basil is to pair it with tomatoes or peppers.
• There are lots of different kinds of basil.  The flavors can range from lemon to cinnamon to the traditional Italian basils. Different flavors allow you to pair your basil with different types of foods making it an extremely versatile herb.
• When growing basil pinch the stem tips to encourage a bushy plant.  It also delays the flowering.
• The flowered are edible and make an interesting addition to salads!
• Basil can be highly ornamental.  Dark purple colors, speckled colors, ruffled leaves, and large crinkly leaves are traits demonstrated by various basils that can give your garden a unique look that is also edible!
• Basil propagates easily from cuttings.  Just put a basil cutting in a glass of water and watch the roots form in a few days.  Propagating basil is a great technique when you want more basil for your garden or want to bring some indoors for winter use.
• At the end of the season allow it to flower and go to seed.  You can collect the seed or allow it to self sow in your garden.
• Basil can be used to make pesto, sauces, put on pizza, tomato sandwiches, paired with tomato and cheese with Balsamic vinegar, put in salads, used in marinades, and many other kitchen uses!

Cinnamon Basil

Lettuce Leaf Basil - large crinkly leaves

What is your favorite use for basil?

Planting a Tomato Garden

For my farmer's market business I grew a lot of tomato plants.  In fact I grew more than I think I can sell over the next couple weeks and after that no one will be looking for plants.  Gardeners will be wanting to harvest their tomatoes instead of planting more.  I planned a few weeks ago that I would take a portion of what I can't sell and grow them myself to bring the tomatoes to the market.  The problem is I didn't have a good spot inside the garden to house another 30 tomato plants.  There just wasn't enough room so it was time to make a new bed exclusively for the tomatoes.

 
I chose a spot on our property that wasn't in a very well used area.  Our slope tends to just be another area to be mowed so I took a 4 foot wide by 25-30' area and claimed it for the tomato garden.  The garden had to run from north to south and not from east to west. Using an east to west orientation it will receive morning sun and afternoon sun through about 4 PM then the area goes to shade.  The tomatoes should have plenty of light since ideally they like 8 or more hours of sunshine.

I tilled the tomato garden area to break up the sod first.  It took quite a few passes to break it up into the top layer of soil.  The bed is higher on the left side and backs into the slope to catch rain as it comes down and hold it in the bed.  Sloped areas generally drain faster than flat areas and I wanted to hold more moisture in the bed for a longer time so I sloped back into the slope.

After tilling to break up the sod I raked the area to remove roots from grass and weeds, added a combination of soil amendments, then tilled again.  The second tilling mixed in the amendments so they would be present in the soil for the plants.  This area has heavy clay underneath the topsoil and the amendments should help the plants a lot!


Then I dug holes in a staggered pattern and planted tomatoes.  I pinched off the lower growth of the tomato then bury as much of the plant in the hole as I can.  At this point the plants are a good size so I won't plant them as deep as I normally would.  Any stem area planted beneath the soil will grow roots and make a larger root system.  My holes were also limited by the quality of soil underneath.  Once I reached clay I didn't dig any deeper.

I filled the holes and covered the base of the plant with a small mound of soil then came back with grass clippings for mulch.  Grass is cheap and plentiful in my yard and does a good job of maintaining moisture in the soil.  It breaks down eventually which improves the soil over time.  It's also nice that my grass has a good amount of clover which is awesome for fixing nitrogen!

I watered the plants well and set out a few 'T' posts to eventually use a staking method called the Florida weave.  I'll post on that later once my tomato plants are tied up.  

A Few Notes on Summer Heat and Watering

The weather has turn hot and humid, of course this is normal for summers in Tennessee.  We are blessed with a very long growing season but our summers can be extremely warm.  Last year on a record setting June day we reached over 110 degrees.  Which also happened to be the day our air conditioner decided to quit!  We spent that day making snowcones with all the curtains shut just to stay cool.  Our plants don't have the ability to make snowcones though.  They don't need air conditioning either.  What they do need is good watering.  Not too much and not too little.  Too much water can drown the roots and introduce fungal diseases among the branches.  Too little water and they won't be able to survive.
 

So far this year I haven't set up my garden's irrigation.  I haven't really needed additional water very much.  We've had good rainfall and the soil deep beneath my pepper plants has been very moist due to the sheet composting layer of grass clippings covered with newspaper.  The soil and mulch on the top layer keeps the water around the roots just where it needs to be.  Mulch is critical to keeping a garden healthy in our hot summers.  You can't depend on the rain to water your garden and the mulch regulates the soil temperature and evaporation rate. Soon I'll be adding my garden irrigation system to make watering my plants simpler and easier than walking around with a watering can.  I have something different in mind this year that I'll share with you soon.

Always remember to water your plants in the morning or in the evening.

Wet plants + Extreme Heat and Humidity = Fungal Diseases

Keep the water low to the ground and put it where the roots are.  The foliage doesn't need watered.  Soaker hoses or drip irrigation lines are great for putting the water where it needs to be.

Try to garden in the morning before the heat of the day has really set in to avoid heat related illnesses.  Always drink plenty of water to keep yourself hydrated too!

The summer heat is a good thing for our warm season plants until it gets in the mid 90's.  Many plants will shut down their production while the heat is too high.  When it gets cooler they will produce again.

For now the heat will encourage our tomato and pepper plants to produce fruit which we're all looking forward to!  I can't wait for that first tomato from the garden, how about you?

Homemade Plant Tags for Hybridizing Plants

Last year I began to experiment with hybridizing.  I'm hoping that the plants I cross together result in something really nice but it takes a few years to get something from the crosses.  So far I've experimented with daylilies, echinacea, and irises.  Hostas are on my list but the deer keep getting to the flowers before they've had a chance to produce seed.  One of the issues I've run across is labeling.  It's very easy to get mixed up on your crosses.  I came up with an idea recently to make my own plant tags/labels that I can put on each crossed flower.  Here's what I did:

The plant label is made from a plastic plant tag I cut into a 2 inch rectangle.  I punched a hole in it with a standard hole puncher and added a bit of garden twine to hang it on the plant.  If you don't have a plant tag to cut like I did you could use any sort of plastic from yogurt cups, to milk jugs, to mini-blinds.  Just cut them to an appropriate size that leaves you plenty of room to write the pod parent and the pollen parent for record keeping.  After the seeds form you'll be able to tell which cross was which!

Have you hybridized any of your plants before?

4 Tomato Growing Tips!

The tomatoes are coming along nicely in our garden which means it's time to do a few important things for them to maximize their growth.  Here are a few quick tomato tips to help you grow your favorite backyard vegetable! (It's really a fruit though!)

Stake your tomato well.  Whatever method you use to stake your tomatoes make sure it will hold the plant.  A good stake or cage will prevent the tomato from coming in contact with the soil and allow good air circulation around the plant to minimize fungal diseases.  Traditional tomato cages will eventually become too heavy with the weight of the fruit to stay up so another method is better.  Try using heavy duty stakes, heavy gauge wire cages with T posts to stake them up, the Florida weave method, livestock panel 'A' Frames or overhead supports with string lines for support.

Fertilize appropriately!  I always hear of someone who goes out and fertilizes their tomatoes intending to get good growth and production.  What actually happens is good growth and low production due to a high nitrogen fertilizer.  Nitrogen will produce leaves and branches but not fruit.  Take a balanced approach or lean toward the potassium and phosphorus part of the NPK rating.  You don't want a 20 foot tomato plant with only 2 tomatoes!  Organic fertilizers have lower amounts of NPK and feed the soil which is the best approach.  If your soil is healthy your plants will be too.  Artificial fertilizers feed the plant right way which will require that you continue feeding the plant to keep it growing nicely.  When the soil is healthy the plants have what they need and use the nutrients as needed.

Prune correctly.  With tomatoes you want to reduce suckering.  Suckers are the little branches that begin to grow from in between other branches.  You can let these grow but if you do your plant will grow lots of branches and have smaller fruits.  The suckers also decrease air flow around the plant and increase the odds of fungal diseases.  If you see signs of disease remove these branches and destroy them - do not put them in the compost bin.  It's also a good idea to clean your pruners between plants as you can easily spread disease from plant to plant.

Blossom end rot happens very frequently to the first few fruits on your plant.  Try not to worry about it too much and just remove the fruit.  It's caused by a calcium issue in the plant. Calcium is used to form cell walls in the fruits and without enough calcium the walls break down and rot away the fruit from the blossom end. Either the plant isn't getting enough water to transport calcium from the soil, the plant is getting too much water to transport the calcium, or the soil doesn't have enough calcium in it.  Most likely it's not a soil issue as there's almost always lime available but if it is an issue you can amend with lime or bonemeal.  These will take time to break down into forms usable by the plant. Try to keep the watering schedule regular, water deeply, and do not overwater.  Too much water will also cause the skin to crack.

Use these tips to grow some of the best tomatoes ever!  Remember the best tomato is always the one YOU grew.

A Quick Update from the Garden

This week has been eventful. I haven't been able to post much about the garden due to the happenings here but I did want to catch everyone up on how things are growing.  Here's a quick update on the garden.

The beans are climbing the bamboo trellis I put together.  I gathered it up from a roadside where someone had left it for the city to come by and remove.  I figured I could make good use of them as a bean tee-pee.  It will look more impressive as the beans climb their way to the top.

Our lavender is having its best show ever this year.  The honeybees are happy to have it around.  I would bet that the honey they make would be very good from lavender flowers.  I have noticed a drop off in the amount of bees in my garden this year although perhaps their number is rising as the season progresses.  Many beekeepers have reported significant losses in our area due to the cold weather and late frosts as well as other factors. Avoid the pesticides please!

The daylilies have begun their blooming in our garden.  Here are a few but I'll post again with a more daylily specialized post later.

I cleaned off the porch the other day.  My Coral Red honeysuckle was getting out of hand.  I think I need to move it permanently to another location.  I guess that means I need to build another arbor or a fence.

The farmers market business I have selling plants is doing great.  My income is much higher than it was last year which I believe has to do with what I've produce for the market.  I grew more heirloom vegetables and herbs than I did ornamentals.

But by far the most important update isn't actually in the garden...at least not yet.  One day I'm sure she will be.  Meet my newest daughter Marian!

Both baby and mother are doing great!

Re-planting the Self-Sowing Garden

A couple weeks ago I redid our self-sowing garden.  It was getting messy and too many weeds incorporated themselves into the garden.  I suppose they thought they could pass themselves off as desirable plants but their plans were foiled by May's Lowe's Creative Ideas Project!  The theme for this month was bulb plants.  Being one to never turn away from a project with plants I set out to Lowe's to have some plant buying fun.

I went to the store and collect several bulb plants, a few rhizome plants, and of course a few other assorted plants to fill in the garden.  Once I bought the plants I had to clear the area to plant them.  The self-sowing garden usually holds poppies, cosmos, coneflower, rudbeckia, salvia, and many others but had become overgrown with early spring weeds like chickweed.  I removed the weeds and replaced them with these beautiful plants that I brought home from Lowe's:

Peony 'Wladyslawa' - bloom just opening

Peony 'Wladyslawa' - in full bloom

Iris 'Clarence'

Iris 'Goldkist'

Iris 'Loop the Loop'

Asiatic Lily 'Matrix Orange'

Asiatic with huge blooms! That's my camera lens to the left.

I also added several marigolds which are great plants to help prevent damaging pests in the garden and a couple sweet potato vines to sprawl around as a border ground cover.  Here's the result!

The Asiatic lilies will grow and become more established after this year as will the irises.  In the spring this area will pop up with bulb blooms and eventually give way to the self sowing plants for summer creating a completely different effect for each season!