Cucumbers

netting for cucumbers to climb up on

cucumbers growing on netting

cucumbers on vines

We grow cucumbers in our greenhouse because the season is so short here. In May, after we hang  netting that has large spaces in it from the roof of the greenhouse, we plant our seeds in the soil of the greenhouse floor.  Then we put black plastic between the rows to keep the weeds down and to heat up the soil. Yes, we have weeds, they blow in the open windows and doors and we bring them in on our feef and clothes.  After that, we sprinkle Concern, ( diatomaceous earth, organic crawling insect killer), over the seeds before they come up.

You should be able to order Concern, at gardening stores or gardening catalogs. See the post (: http://51chevy.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/catalogs-that-…nhouse-growing/ ) If you still can’t find it click this site http://www.victorpest.com/search?page=1&search=concern.  Concern kills crawling insects like slugs and pill bugs that eat plant shoots and young plants.  It can be used in the garden, on house plants, or in the greenhouse.

I recently learned that Concern, cannot be shipped to all states, however, another product called Safer, diatomaecous earth can. Go to http://www.saferbrand.com/store/insect-control/51702  to order on line.

There are two different kins of  diatomaceous earth, one is used to filter swimming pools.  This type should not be used as it is dangerous to breath it in because it can cause lung damage.  The variety used for gardens is a much finer powder and does not pose a health hazard.

As the cucumbers grow up the netting you must weave the vines in and out of the netting spaces.  This is necessary in order for the vine to support the weight of the cucumbers as they grow.

Deer, Oh Dear

Deer, the gardeners nemesis.  It’s not easy doing battle with Bambi, it takes an arsenal of products to keep them at bay.  I’ve tried motion detection devices, dogs,  animal blood products, garlic, Irish spring soap placed in old socks and hung from my apple trees and fences. They are always testing your defences to see if they can find a weak spot to exploit.

The ultimate defence is a well-trained, unleashed dog that stays out at night during the spring, summer and fall. Unfortunately, a dog can only be used by gardeners living in rural areas or who have invisible fencing.

The second best defence is a motion detection device that makes noise  and has a flashing light.  The problem with them is that they can be expensive and can only protect 15- 30 feet of circumference, can be difficult to mount and move around.  Check out the Yard Control, electronic fence and the Yard Gard electronic pest repeller. I kept a black bear from returning to my chicken coop with it one these devices last  spring. There is also a water spraying device that you can hook up to a garden hose that will spray water and frighten animals away.  This seems to work best for a small garden.

Third is good old garlic, Deer can’t stand the smell of it.  You can make a liquid solution in a blender and spray your garden or plants that the deer are eating with it, however, you have to  spray after each rain.  We have three large garden  beds so that is not practical for us.  Instead, we plant garlic cloves among our seeds and vegetable plants and let them grow there all  season.  The following spring we dig up the garlic bulbs and replant them were needed. You can also get garlic clips from Gardener’s Supply Co.  They look like fat ball point pens with clips on them that you can clip on to tree branches, wire fence, and plants.  I use them and feel they are very effective.

The only way I could keep the deer from browsing on my newly planted apple trees was to build a fence around it using 52 inch high, 1 inch chicken wire and medal post with barbed wire all around the top.  You have to make sure you can open the enclosure so you can get in to prune and take care of your tree.  If you want to fence in larger areas, you will have to use 7 foot high deer fencing.  Deer fence is not always successful and can be very expensive.

I was not impressed with animal blood.  It’s messy to mix and has to be sprayed again after every rain.  I have some animal blood left over and I’m going to spread it dry around the outside of the garden to see if it keeps the deer away.

Irish Spring bar soap cut into quarters and put into old socks and hung from trees in order to keep the deer from browsing on them worked OK. You need to hang them close together, they detract from the trees appearance  and cause the limbs to bend and get in the way when mowing the grass.  Shaved into small pieces and spread around the garden didn’t seem to work for me at all.  Some gardeners swear by it though.

This spring I’m going to give coyote urine a try on the blueberry patch. I’ll let you know how it does.  It can also be hung from trees to keep deer away from your fruit trees.

For catalogs that sell deer deterrents see the post Catalogs That Sell What You Need To Work Your Garden And Keep Your Greenhouse Growing. Gardeners Supply Co. and Gardens Alive, each have a large selection of deer and other animal deterrents.

To keep deer at bay you really need to use as many different types of deterrents at the same time as you can.  If you find any really good ways to keep deer away please let me know.

Garlic

Drying Garlic                                                                         Planting garlic

There are many types of soft neck and hard neck garlic and they also have different flavors. You can order garlic cloves from seed catalogs.  ( see the post “Ordering Seeds It’s A Joint Adventure,”) never use the garlic you get in grocery stores.  Just like every thing else garlic is rated for different climate zones.  Only order garlic cloves rated for zone 3-4.  It seem that the only garlic that is rated for zone 3-4  are the hard neck types.

Garlic can be planted anytime between late August and October.  After you harvest your garlic you can set some aside to plant.   It usually takes about a year for garlic to mature into large bulbs, so plant accordingly. Before planting you must separate the cloves from the bulbs. Break the paper between cloves with a knife if you have to and then separate the cloves from the bulb.  They should be planted about 4 inches apart. (see above picture) After  planting the cloves will start to grow, sending up green shoots almost immediately.  They will stay green all winter even under the snow but will stop growing when the ground freezes.

Next summer they will produce flower spikes called scapes,  you must remove them before they flower.  Go along the row and grab them by the stalk and tug, they will come right out.  Scapes can be used raw in salads or cooked with swiss chard for example.
As soon as the tops start to turn brown they should be dug up and processed for drying.  If you wait to long the bulbs will split and they will not keep as long.  We usually wash the bulbs, with stalks still attached, then we cut off the stalks with pruning shears to about 1 to 2 inches above the bulb.  Then they are set out to dry in our greenhouse or in some warm dry place, like a sunny porch.  They should dry for a week or two. (see above picture) After drying garlic should be stored in a cool dark place, I keep mine at the top of the stairs to my cellar.  I have a real cellar with a dirt floor.  Yours would probably keep well in a cool dark closet in your basement.  I hang the bulbs in orange bags.  I save the net bags oranges come in during the winter and use them to store garlic.  They will keep a long time but won’t last until next summer.

The Backyard Chicken Flock

Having a flock of chickens and gardening go hand in hand.  The chickens not only eat a lot of garden and kitchen scraps and provide manure for the garden and they also lay eggs.  Chickens you raise yourself will provide you and your friends and neighbors with wholesome and delicious eggs.  Because they eat bugs, worms, grass and scraps from the garden and kitchen their egg yolks have a dark orange color and are higher in nutrients than eggs you get from the store , they taste different too.

Chickens  need to have water and  laying mash available at all times and need to be fed scratch grain and oyster shells daily.  I usually give them one grain scoop of scratch grain with some oyster shells added to it a day. The oyster shells help keep their egg shells strong. Most feed companies have organic chicken feed.

I have had a flock of chickens since 1968, they came with the farm.  I keep a small flock ranging from between 13 and 20 birds.  I prefer Rhode Island reds and Buff  Orphington breeds.  Rhode Island roosters are the very gentle and will not fly at you or attack you when you go into the chicken yard to collect eggs.  Buff Orphington’s are the best mothers although Rhode Island reds are very good mothers too.

When we first started keeping chickens we didn’t pay much attention to the breed of rooster.  We learned early on that some breeds are very aggressive and protective of their hens.  They can be very dangerous especially to children as they will fly at you with feet forward at your face and can cause serious injury.  We have had a number of roosters, until we discovered the qualities of the Rhode Island Red,  that we had to take a good sized stick with us to fight off the rooster while collecting eggs.  One time my late husband hit the rooster so hard that he thought he killed it.  It laid there for a while, than got up.  We dispatched that rooster soon after as he had become much too dangerous to have around.

You do not have to have a rooster with your hens for them to lay well.  You only need one if you want to raise your own chicks.  One rooster for up to thirty hens is enough, more that one and they will fight and disrupt egg laying. I raised my own chicks for many years.  To raise chicks you put five to nine eggs, it has to be an uneven number, one for her to put under her breast,  under a broody hen. It takes twenty one day for chicks to start to hatch.  The last few years I have been buying chicks and putting them under broody hens to care for them.  You’ll know when a hen gets broody, that’s when she wants to raise chicks, when she refuses to get off the nest.  A hen will sit on a nest for months some times.  The only way you can break up a set, ( a broody hen) is to move her to another location.  A hen will stop laying eggs when she has been broody for a while.

Broody hens will accept chicks that they did not hatch as long as they have been sitting on false eggs.  When the chicks arrive at the Post Office, see picture above, I put them in a cardboard box with a 25 watt light bulb for heat and some chick starter food and water until it gets dark.   Then I remove the false eggs and put the chicks under her. When she hears the chicks peeping she will start to make low clucking sounds to them.  You can raise chicks without a hen in an incubator.  If you already have hens it’s much easier this way and they will be able to eat grass and bugs at an earlier age.

It’s good to keep a flock of hens going by starting your own eggs or buying chicks every year or so.  The life span of a chicken is about five years although I have had some that lived longer.  Hens that are three years old or older will not lay eggs every day.  The older they are the fewer eggs they will lay a week.  That’s why it’s a good idea to raise your on chicks at least once a year in order to keep the flock young.  You always have replacement hens and a new rooster when you need them.  Extra hens and roosters can be sold or if you are disposed, you can eat them.  For me it’s too much work to prepare them for cooking and because they are free range they tend to be  tough.

Free range means not in a cage, they don’t have to be let loose all over the place.  I have my hens fenced in a very large yard.  I used to let them range free in the spring and fall, however, the first thing they would head for were my flower gardens.  After a few years of trying unsuccessfully to keep them from digging up my flowers, I penned them in.  Now everyone is happy.

Old Timey Planting Guides

In years gone by people planted their crops according to the cycle of the moon, sun and other visual signs. Here are a few of the signs they observed when planting.

Corn and Beans.

Plant corn and beans when elm leaves are the size of a squirrel’s ear, when oak leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear, when apple blossoms begin to fall, or when dogwoods are in full bloom.

Lettuce, spinach and cole crops.

Plant lettuce, spinach seeds in the garden and  broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, pac choi, Chinese cabbage etc. seedlings  in the garden, when the lilacs show their first leaves or when daffodils begin to bloom.  See also post,  “Of Cabbages and Kings”.

Tomatoes, early corn, peppers.

Plant tomatoes and peppers plants and early corn, when dogwoods are in peak bloom or when day lilies start to bloom.  See also post, “Tomatoes and Peppers”, on page 2.

Cucumbers and squash.

Plant cucumbers and squash seedlings when lilac flowers fade. See also post, “Squash Anyone?”.

Potatoes

Plant potatoes when the first dandelion blooms. See also post, “One potato, Two Potato”.

Beets and carrots.

Plant beets and carrots when dandelions are blooming.

Peas.

Plant peas when the forsythia blooms, when daffodils begin to bloom or on Good Friday.  See also post, “Peas Please”.

This information gleaned from “The Old Farmers Almanac” and the University of Wisconsin Extension.

Beware,  sudden prolonged warmer than usual weather may cause apples, other fruits and plants to soften early so that they will blossom and then get caught by a frost, which could cause the above signs to be off by a few weeks or more.   Such a hot spell forced my apples and blueberries to bloom too soon last year and they produced little if  any fruit.

A truism in zone 3-4 is never plant your tomatoes or other tender crops before  May 30th, no matter how warm it has been.  More that a few neighbors have not heeded this warning and have lost their tomatoes and tender plants and had to start over again.

Spring Planted Bulbs, Shrubs and Trees

We are all familiar with the bulbs that come up in the spring, like daffodils and crocus, that have to be planted in the fall in order to have blooms in the spring.  There are bulbs and other plants that can be planted in the spring that will bloom in the summer such as lilies, dahlias, Host, astilbe and many many other flowering plants.

Spring is the best time to plant fruit trees, shrubs, berry bushes, strawberries and landscape plants because you find out almost immediately whether or not they have survived or need to be replaced.

Here is a list of catalogs that sell spring planted bulbs, flowers, shrubs and trees.

Michigan Bulb Co. ,  McClure & Zimmerman,  High Country Gardens, Select Seeds,  K.Van Bourgondien & sons, inc. whole sale catalog,   Van Bourgondien,  Farmer Seed and Nursery,  Stark Bro’s.

Freezing and canning your garden produce

Linda and I have been very busy these past few weeks harvesting and processing our garden bounty.  So far we have frozen numerous pints and quarts of peas, green and yellow string beans, broccoli, cauliflower, and water bath canned 7 quarts of tomatoes.  We harvested and dried our garlic and soon we will be pulling up our onions and drying them and storing both in our cool dark basements.

The peas finished producing in the middle of July.  The string beans have stopped producing enough to freeze, but we can still find enough to have with a meal or eat raw.  Broccoli has just about stopped producing and the cauliflower may have enough for one more round of freezing.  The tomatoes have been producing for a few weeks now.  Last week we had enough to can 14 quarts and after a look in the greenhouse this morning we have another batch to do this week.  So far we have 21 quarts of tomatoes.

The Stripped German tomatoes have been producing very large tomatoes.  Yesterday I harvested about 15 huge tomatoes, they have been producing steadily for weeks now but yesterday’s haul was the most at one time.  We are giving away and eating as many as we can because you cannot water bath can Stripped German tomatoes safely because they do not have a high enough acid content.  Linda and I have been stuffing ourselves with bacon and tomato sandwiches, our favorite way to eat them.  It really is a shame that you can’t keep tomatoes like apples so you can enjoy them over a longer period of time.

The new fiberglass roof on the greenhouse has made a big difference in the amount and size of peppers and tomatoes we have grown this year.  The old fiberglass roof had darkened due to the fiberglass fibers being exposed to the elements because of erosion of the protective layer and mold discoloring it.

Soon we will be freezing corn and digging up our potatoes for storage in the root cellar and the last crop to be harvested will be winter squash and pumpkins, which we store in our cool basements.

This year we have very few apples and blueberries, probably due to a very warm spell in April that started the trees and bushes blooming followed by a very cold spell.  Cool and rainy weather keep the bees from pollinating the them.  There might be a shortage of honey bees but I have noticed a big increase in the  number of bumble bees in my apple trees and blueberries this spring.

Impatiences

Impatiences need to be started in early March, right after the tomatoes and peppers. A sunny front or back porch or germination stand is a good place to start seeds that need an really early start.

This germination stand has two 25 watt bulbs for heat under the shelves and two florescent bulbs on the top of the shelf for light. Linda’s husband Tim built it for her when she started gardening. When we started gardening together, it was moved to my house because It is my job to start our seeds.

After the tomatoes and peppers are off the germination stand the Impatiences go on. It can take up to 3 weeks for impatiences to come up. They don’t like heat under them and need light to germinate. The seeds should be only very slightly covered with sifted potting soil or seed starting potting mix. Seed starting potting mix is a very light potting soil and is available from Miracle-grow. I keep them under fluorescent lights. The lights are turned off at night to simulate a normal day. I have had really good results using this method. The plants are then put on the front porch until the end of May. After the last frost the flats are put out on the old stone sink, where they will be planted, to grow and harden off for a few weeks.

I plant the same variety every year, Busy Lizzie, blue pearl. It’s a great cool color for the stone sink planter on the north side of the greenhouse which is also a south west direction by the back porch. When you come out of the house on a hot summer day the first thing you see are the lilac blue Impatience or the pink and white bleeding heart that grows beside the planter.

Peas, Please

Since the jute string is hard to see, I have drawn a line underneath the string to make it easier to find.

I know that it’s a little late in the season to be talking about peas. It occured to me that maybe someone else might like to know about some of the pea culture ideas we have put into practice here in our garden. Since I’m a tall person and getting on in years I don’t like to bend down to do anything. That’s why I weed sitting on a step 2 garden scoot and sew peas onto a chicken wire fence.

Peas need to be planted as early in the spring as possible. We usually try to plant them on Good Friday. This year Good Friday was so early, March 21st, that the garden was still covered with snow so we had to wait until the ground thawed out to plant them. Peas like it cool and if it gets too hot for too long they will just turn yellow, stop producing and die.

There are three kinds of peas, snap or edible podded, snow or sugar peas and shelling. Snap or edible podded peas look like shelling peas when they are ripe, they are round and look full of peas. Snow peas are flat and should be picked then they are small to medium size and very flat. With both snow and sugar snap peas you eat the pod and all. Before cooking or eating raw it is a good idea to pull off the string, just grasp the stem end and pull down and it should come off easily. Shelling peas need to be removed from their pods before eating or processing. Shelling and snap or edible podded peas come in many varieties and are either short or tall. I prefer the tall variety because I don’t like to bend over to pick them, tall peas also don’t get dirty laying in the dirt.

We sew both the short and tall varieties of peas onto 48 inch high, 1 inch grid chicken wire fences when the peas begin to flower. We do this because when the pods mature the tendrils are not strong enough to hold the peas onto the fence because of the weight of the pods. We use a dowel with a rounded head and drill a hole large enough to thread jute twine through it. Jute twine last only one season which makes clean up easy next spring. I takes two people to sew the peas onto the fence, one on either side to pass the needle, the dowel, back and forth through the fence to secure the pea plants. The best and fastest way to do this is to sew one side then the other, skipping over some of the peas and picking them up on the next pass.

Squash, Anyone?

There are two kinds of squash, summer and winter. Of the summer squashes there are basically three types, yellow, patty pan and zucchini or green. There are many many kinds of winter squash. We grow carnival, butternut, sweet meat, red kuri, gourds, field and pie pumpkin. In zone 3-4 they need to be started in pots in early May. We plant 5 seeds to a pot and plant the contents of the pot as a hill in the garden. We start ours in the greenhouse, we put the pots in between the rows of cucumbers that we planted directly into the greenhouse soil in early May.

Then we plant them in the garden in black plastic in early June. The black plastic keeps the soil warm and moist, as the squash needs to mature fast in a short season climate. You cannot grow squash in the greenhouse because the leaves become moldy. Cucumbers become moldy after a while also, however, they produce fruit fast and so you will still get a good crop. Mold on the cucumbers has never been a problem.

You cannot grow watermelon, or cantaloupe in zone 3-4, even in the greenhouse, unless you live in a river valley or near a large lake, believe me we gave it a good try. Growing cantaloupe and watermelon in the greenhouse results in the leaves getting moldy .

Summer squashes are at their best when cooked small, about 4 inches long, the blossoms can also be fried with batter. Some people prefer to eat squash when it is very large. As long as you can put your fingernail through the skin you don’t have to peel them. Large squash have very hard skins. Squash does not freeze well except when included in a dish like Italian zucchini. To make it I like to use very large zucchini with soft skins along with onions and tomatoes from my garden. You can make large quantities to freeze and it’s a very nice side dish in the winter. I have a friend that likes to keep large zucchini with hard skins in her cellar during the winter and puts the pulp in soup.

Squash attracts squash bugs which can be easily controlled by spraying with “Pyola” a natural insecticide you can get from Gardens Alive. We also grow a very large variety of marigold, called “Gold Coin.” It grows to 36 inches and is tall enough to reach over the squash leaves. You can get it from Jung Seed Co. Marigold is a good plant to use as an insect deterrent although, bees don’t seem to be bothered by it. The pictures above shows the marigold inter-planted with the squash plants.