Tip of the Week – Week 21 in the Zone 9 Garden

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Jay White

It finally finished raining long enough for Sally and I to harvest the rest of the potatoes. While we were out there we also pulled our first cucumbers and picked a small mess of green beans. We just finished an amazing dinner of cucumbers and onions, green beans and an okra/tomato/sausage/smoked poblano concoction. Everything but the sausage came straight from the garden or the freezer. And that my friends is why I garden!

On another note, I recently read an article that said internet readers want their information quick and easy. With that in mind I am going to structure my weekly tips in a different format for a while. If you like it, or even if you don’t, leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Vegetables

Pick Green Beans
Harvest and cure onions
Control aphids, thrips and scale insects with a strong blast of water. If this is not working spray entire plant with neem oil or a water/dish soap mixture
Harvest Potatoes-It has rained so much lately that it has washed much of the soil away from my potato plants. I literally have potatoes on top of the ground. This will cause two problems. First, the harvest is going to be a muddy mess. No way around this. I will have to dig them and then go directly to the hose for a good wash. I do not normally recommend washing your potatoes. When potatoes come out of the ground their skins are soft and can be damaged by washing. Damaged skins let in fungus that will cause the potatoes to rot during storage. That is why we cure them before we store them. To cure potatoes we need to let them dry in the hot sun for a few hours. All of this rain is causing an unusual lack of sunshine. Because of this I will have to figure out a way to move the potatoes into the garage for curing. This is a big problem for me because my garage is already covered with the onions that I had to cure inside because of the rain.

Ornamentals

Pull weeds while the ground is soft. Throw them in the compost pile if they have not set seed
Dead head zinnias and marigolds
Plant zinnias (Benary’s Giant are my favorites) and marigolds from seed
Plant Sunflowers-There are about a million different varieties of sunflowers and I grow several of them (my favorite is a double called “Teddy Bear” that grows on three to four foot tall stalks and produces gorgeous flowers). For the next couple of months I will plant more seeds every other week. This “two week planting schedule” will ensure that Sally and I have an ample supply of fresh cuts for our home right up to the first frost.
Plant Gomphrena (Bachelor’s Buttons) – I have two places in my yard where I grow gomphrena (Bachelor’s Buttons). Gomphrena is a great plant for our area because it can really take the heat and it will keep flowers until the first frost. Even though it is an annual it is a great self-seeder and will come back on its own year after year. That is, it will come back year after year as long as you don’t have free ranging chickens that scratch up all of the seedlings in your beds. That is what has happened at my house. Thanks to my chickens I currently have no gomphrena. So this weekend I will be replanting. Many of our reseeders (like gomphrena, zinnia, poppies and marigolds) can be planted by running a rake over and area and then putting the seeds out in a broadcast manner. Once the seeds are down, run the rake across the soil to lightly cover the seeds. Finally, gently water the area. Keep the soil moist until the little plants develop their first set of real leaves.

Lawns

Do not fertilize until things dry out. Nitrogen, moisture and cool temps encourage brown spot

I share my posts on the HomeAcre Hop. Be sure to stop by the hop. It has tons of great information from gardeners and homesteaders all over the world!

Tip of the Week – Week 17 in the Zone 9 Garden

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Jay White

Happy Earth Day! 45 years ago Senator Gaylord Nelson decided to raise consciousness about the environment after witnessing a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. His efforts started the modern environmental movement and led to a worldwide celebration and network dedicated to raising consciousness about a wide array of problems and issues facing our planet.

As a gardener, you know that April is the perfect time to celebrate the earth. Everything is blooming and growing. Unfortunately everything doesn’t just mean flowers and fruits. No, in April, everything is growing – including weeds and bugs! Because of this I thought I would take this opportunity to do something a little different with the weekly tip. Since we will all be spending a whole lot of time and effort battling pests over the next couple of months I thought I would tell you about my two favorite pest control tools. Before I start I would like to say that I get nothing for promoting these products. After much trial and error I have found these two tools to be invaluable and I just want to share them with you.

CobraHead

My most used and most loved garden tool is the CobraHead Weeder & Cultivator. This curved piece of steel with a little football shaped head goes with me every time I go into the garden. After trying many, many different tools throughout the years, I have found this inexpensive tool works best for me.

As the name says, this little tool does it all. I use it to weed and I use it to plant. Its sleek shape gives me enough leverage to pry up crab grass or scrape out Bermuda runners. It also allows me to quickly dig holes for transplants or dig a furrow for planting seeds in my black clay soil. I get all of this functionality out of a tool that only costs $25. What a deal!

MITEYFINE Mister

While the CobraHead helps keep my weeds at bay, the MITEYFINE Mister helps me wash my bug problems away. The MITEYFINE Mister is an ingeniously simple tool that does a great job keeping aphids, spider mites and even some caterpillars at bay.

Co-blogger Patty Leander introduced me to the MITEYFINE. Her brother is an engineer and he is the inventor of this organic pest control tool. The MITEYFINE is a wand that attaches to your hose. The tip at the end is specifically designed for pest control. It applies just enough pressure to knock off the bugs without damaging the plant. Plus, it uses no chemicals, which is really important to me.

The MITEY fine comes in two lengths – 36” and 48”. The extra ergonomic handle assembly adds 10” to the overall length but makes the wand much easier to handle. Patty likes the short one and I have the longer one. This tool has an all metal construction so it will help you kill scale insects for a very long time.

I share my posts on the HomeAcre Hop. Be sure to stop by the hop. It has tons of great information from gardeners and homesteaders all over the world!

Tip of the Week – Week 13 in the Zone 9 Garden

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Jay White

Finally!!!! Great gardening weather is predicted for this weekend. If you have been able to plant you should have things sprouting. If you haven’t you really need to get those squash, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes in the ground.

Right now aphids and other pests are beginning to hatch. While I despise them, I have a bigger, and much cuter pest problem to deal with

Vegetables

If you were lucky enough to get your seeds and plants in the ground you are already ahead of the game. Once your little plants are past the cotyledon size you can begin to fertilize. You can side dress with finished compost on a bi-weekly basis. I love using compost in its dry form. However, I believe in the early part of the growing season compost is most effective when used as a drench (compost tea). There are a million different ways to make compost tea. To me, the easiest way is add a shovel full of finished compost to a five gallon bucket and fill with water. Also add a cup of molasses (to feed the microbes) and stir daily (or add an aerator to it) for a week to ten days. Strain the finished mixture into your sprayer. To apply, spray your plants weekly until the mixture begins to drip off of their leaves.

Aphids are beginning to hatch and they will attack just about every plant in your garden. Some research shows that plants treated with compost tea actually repel these pests.

Now is the time to get serious about feeding your onions. As the temperatures rise their growth will increase rapidly. If you are growing your onions organically, top dress your rows with a high quality, high nitrogen compost (like manures) every month. If you are fertilizing your onions top dress the soil with ½ cup of fertilizer (ammonium sulfate (21-0-0) for alkaline soils and calcium nitrate (15.5-0-0) for acidic soils ) for every ten feet of row. Apply every month until you see the soil beginning to be pushed back by the bulb.

If you are like me you have a tendency to over plant. Through the years I have learned this is a bad idea. Plants that are too close together produce less and they produce later. Plus, plants that are too close together are a magnet for all sorts of pests. So, if you have already planted, get out there and thin your plantings. If you are going to plant this weekend try and follow the recommended spacing listed on the seed packets.

Control aphids with a strong blast of water or horticultural oils like neem and orange.

Now let’s talk about pests. If you have plants that are up, then you probably have aphids that are hatching just in time to feast on them. I got a question about aphids on my Facebook page from Melinda Stanton. Melinda asked if aphid eggs over winter in the soil. Well, the answer is YES!!! Aphid eggs over winter in the litter around your plants. They are horrible little pests. If you can start spraying them now with a good blast of the hose it will help prevent them from getting out of control. I use a tool called the Mitey Fine mister to spray mine. If this doesn’t work I suggest trying Neem oil. Neem is an organic horticultural oil that coats them in oil and basically suffocates them. It is more expensive than water but seems to work very well. I use it on all of my plants that have an aphid or scale problem, even my crepe myrtles. Also, my buddy Bart Brechter (curator of gardens at Bayou Bend) swears by orange oil. Exact same concept as the neem but it smells a lot better!

Herbs

My wife loves fresh herbs. She loves cooking with them and she uses them to make incredible teas. I like eating her cooking and drinking her teas but that is not why I love growing herbs. Herbs are easy to grow and most are very ornamental. I absolutely love walking through my garden and crushing a mint leaf or brushing up against my rosemary. Right now is the perfect time to plant herbs. Some of my favorites are spearmint, peppermint, lemon balm, rosemary, chives, basil, thyme and oregano. My ABSOLUTE fave is Mexican Mint Marigold. This plant is almost bullet proof. It takes heat and drought and resists pests. Plus it makes a lovely little 18” tall rounded mound that gets covered in little yellow flowers in the fall. It also has a great anise smell and taste. I use this in many of my flower beds and I truly love it.

Ornamentals

COLOR is the word for the week. Plant tons of marigolds now. It is still not too late for seed but you will get faster blooms from transplants. I also love petunias and the garden centers are full of them. Those in the garden centers are all fine but they are all hybrids. Why not try and get a start of the good old fashioned petunia. It is a purple-y magenta and the blooms are smaller. However, it is a good reseeder. If you can find this variety and get it going you will have it forever.

Poppies are my favorite spring flower. Here are some of my red singles in the potager.

I share my posts on the HomeAcre Hop. Be sure to stop by the hop. It has tons of great information from gardeners and homesteaders all over the world!

Organic Aphid Control

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Jay White

If you have spent much time in the garden, you are familiar with aphids. These tiny little pests are quite common and quite annoying. In fact, they are so annoying; lots of people call them plant lice. Aphids do more damage to agricultural and horticultural plants than any other species of insect. In fact, one species of aphid almost entirely destroyed the French wine industry in the 1870’s. They also contributed to the spread of the “Late Blight” fungus that caused the Irish potato famine.

Aphids do more damage to agricultural and horticultural crops than any other insect. Photo by Bruce Leander

Aphids have modified mouth parts that allow them to drill directly into the phloem and extract all of the rich carbohydrates and sugars that it needs from your plants. Aphid damage on plants can lead to decreased growth rates, curled leaves, brown spots, low yields and even death. To make matters worse, aphids are known to spread many different plant viruses. For example, the green peach aphid is known to spread 110 different viruses.

This rose bud is covered with aphids in all stages of their development. The white things in the pictures are the skins they shed as they go from one phase to another. Photo by Sally White

Aphid also excrete a substance called “honeydew” that is also harmful to plants. Aphids feed on plants the same way a mosquito feeds on you. Once they “tap a vein” there is so much food available, and it us under so much pressure, that the unused sap passes through their bodies and onto the plant’s foliage. This forms a sticky, sweet covering on stems and leaves that is a perfect host for mold and fungus.

Close up of aphids in various stages of development. Photo by Bruce Leander.

While there are lots of insecticides that you can spray to control aphids, organic control is usually just as effective. Believe it or not, the most effective tool you can use against the aphid is water. Aphids are soft bodied pests. A good hard blast of water can actually cause the aphid to burst open. Even if it doesn’t burst the aphid, it will knock them to the ground. The ground is a very bad place for an aphid. There are lots of things down there that will eat it. Also, since most cannot fly or crawl very fast, they will often die from exposure before they make it back to your plant.

Effective control with water in not a “one and done” job. If you want to keep aphids in check you are going to need to spray every three or four days. Also, since aphids hide under leaves at night and during the hot part of the day, you need to spray upwards from the bottom of the plant. This is very difficult to accomplish with a water hose. Luckily there are tools out there that can make this job easier and more effective.

As you can see, my roses are infested with aphids again this year. Photo by Sally White.

The best tool I have found is made right here in Texas. It is called the MiteyFine sprayer. The MiteyFine sprayer is essentially a metal tube with a special nozzle that is designed to apply the right amount of pressure (and use the least amount of water) needed to kill aphids. MiteyFine comes in 46” and 58” lengths. The light weight shaft makes it easy to handle and the design ensures that the water finds the aphids that hide in those really hard to get to places.

The MiteyFine sprayer is the most effective tool I have found for organic control of aphids. Photo by Bruce Leander.

I have met several people that are skeptical that water alone can control aphids. In fact, just yesterday I was telling a friend that runs a landscape business about the MiteyFine sprayer. He asked “How do you mix the orange oil in with the water?” No matter how much I swore that water alone was enough, he just didn’t believe me. If you are like my friend, and you feel like you have to spray something on bugs, then you are in luck. Orange oil, neem oil and lantana oil are organic insecticides that can all be sprayed on active infestations with great result. These natural oils kill by clogging the pores that the insects use to breath. However, just like water, you need to spray every few days and you need to spray under the leaves. Be aware that there are some predatory bugs that eat aphids that will also be killed by any oil application.

Lady bugs and their babies are voracious aphid predators. Photo by Bruce Leander.

Lady bugs are another organic aphid control measure that I hear a lot about. While it is true that lady bugs eat a lot of aphids, you would need a whole lot more of them than you can afford to control a good infestation. I have lots of lady bugs in my gardens. However, I still have lots of aphids all over my plants. I am not saying you should not buy and release lady bugs in your garden. Just be aware that they are not the panacea they are made out to be.

Ladybug larvae are often called “aphid lions” because they eat so many of the pests. Photo by Bruce Leander.

Even though aphids are a nuisance, there is no reason to let them ruin all of those beautiful plants that you have worked so hard to grow. With a little observation and a little perseverance, you can control your aphid problems with some very effective organic tools.

Ladybugs lay their eggs close to an aphid infestation. The larvae begin to feed on the slow moving aphids immediately. Photo by Bruce Leander.