Category: Outdoors

Start with the garlic, have patience with potatoes

Those of us who grow vegetables are faced with many questions each year: Will there be a late frost that will harm our tomatoes and peppers if we plant them on Memorial Day weekend? Is it time to harvest garlic now, since they produced their scapes early this year? When should we harvest broccoli — now, with heads still fairly small, or wait till they get bigger? Will the sun finally prevail and give all our veggies a big boost after all this rain?

We have seen more rain than usual — much more. Even a quick shower results in standing water in the walkways between my mounded raised beds. But in addition to the excess water, plants aren’t getting their usual allotment of sunshine. They need sun — strong, bright sun — to grow and produce fruits and leaves. The lack of sunshine is what is causing smaller veggies, yellowed leaves and later ripening.

Is it time to harvest garlic yet? After the plants send up those curly stems we call “scapes,” it is generally fine to harvest garlic. Traditionally I pull mine in mid to late August. But it’s important to pull them at the right time, not sooner or later than needed.

Here’s what I do: I start by groping my garlic. I slip my hand into the soil and feel how big the bulbs are. I don’t pull them if they’re tiny. But to be on the safe side, I pull a few and look at the skin over the cloves. I want the skins to be strong and tight for good storage. If they are breaking down (due to all the rain), I pull my garlic. If not, I let them keep growing, but check them often.

What about potatoes? My advice is to wait. Yes, you will have some small potatoes as soon as they have blossomed. But I wait much longer than that to harvest mine, as I want big spuds. When leaves start to yellow and die back, then I dig them all. In the meantime, I slip my hand into the soil (without disturbing the plants) and grab a few “new” potatoes for a special treat.

Even though a healthy broccoli plant will produce more food from its side shoots than the main head, some of my plants are small and yellowed from lack of sun. I am pulling the feeble ones and planting a late crop of lettuce by seed in the space.

My Brussels sprouts plants are also much smaller than normal this year. Fortunately, they will continue to grow until the end of October or even later. If we get sunshine soon, they should recover. My normal advice is to cut the tops of the plants off on Labor Day weekend so that the plants don’t keep growing taller but instead send their energy into producing big “sprouts.” This year I’ll be lucky if they have stalks at all. So I will wait and see — and I accept that my harvest might be small or non-existent.

Carrots love the rain and are growing nicely. We thinned them in early July and are keeping them well-weeded. Still, little sunshine means they can’t bulk up as they would in a normal year.

Onions are ready to harvest when their tops flop over. Pull the onions, even if small, and allow them to dry for a week or so in a shady, breezy spot.

One bright spot in the garden this year is celery. I don’t usually grow it, as in the past mine has been tough to chew and a magnet for snails and slugs. This year I planted six plants, and although the stalks are not yet thick, the plants are big and so far have not seemed to attract pests. I ate a stalk, and it is tougher than store-bought. But tasty.

I usually grow celeriac instead of celery, and I did start some from seed indoors. Celeriac is also called celery root and has a big bulb that grows above the soil surface. It keeps in the refrigerator for up to six months, and when added in a soup or stew it has the same celery flavor. This year, with little sun? The bulbs are not showing yet.

All this rain inspired me to grow watercress! I got seeds, and the packet says plant in wet soil, preferably in a shady area. I have that. I only did that recently, but the plants have sprouted and seem happy.

The Cornish Fair is always on the third weekend of August and has competitions for everything: who can throw an ax most accurately, who can produce the best strawberry jam — and much more. For me it is a time to compete in the vegetable and flower categories in the gym of the school. Tomatoes generally are ripe by then, but this year — who knows?

Even though I have been picking off the many yellowed leaves on my tomato plants, they are still far behind their usual selves. Do pick off the yellow leaves — they will only spread fungal disease. But only do so when the leaves are dry — if they ever are!

I heard that a study at Harvard found that people who eat a cup of ice cream every day live longer than those that do not. I couldn’t find this study online, but I have my own theory: People who are happy live longer. If eating ice cream makes you happy, have some! Me? I think the study should have been focused on home-grown tomatoes and potatoes and garlic fresh from the garden. I know they keep me happy — and probably living longer than most!

Featured photo: This vegetable garden is soggy at best. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Pick berries, make pie

Have you ever wondered what would happen after a story ends? I have. The children’s book Blueberries for Sal came out in 1948 and has been a hit for 75 years. If Sal was 4 years old in the book, she must be pushing 80. I imagine she went to the University of Maine and got a degree in teaching. She probably married her college sweetie at age 24, and taught for six years before deciding to start a family. I bet she makes a mean blueberry pie.

The key to a great blueberry pie, in my opinion, is to let the blueberries dominate the flavors, not sugar. Pick a recipe, and mix the ingredients using less sugar than recommended. Maybe half, if it seems like a lot. Or if your recipe uses just a half a cup for six cups of berries, it’s probably fine. Add cinnamon, but more is not better. Sometimes I like a little cardamom.

The best berries for a pie are those you picked yourself. Even better are those you grew yourself. I’m picking blueberries now, and have some tips on how to get a good crop.

Paul Franklin and his wife, Nancy, own Riverbend Farm, a self-pick orchard with apples, pears, pumpkins and 1,600 blueberry plants in Plainfield, N.H. Paul once told me that there are just three things to get right if you want lots of blueberries: proper soil pH, proper soil pH and proper soil pH. That’s right: If you don’t have very acidic soil for your berries, you can still have nice bushes, but without proper soil pH, you will only get a few.

For most of us, a simple soil test done with a kit you buy at the garden center or hardware store will show that our soil is around 6.0 or 6.5 if not adjusted. But blueberries want a pH of 4.5 to 5.5 which is much, much more acidic than that. The scale is logarithmic, meaning each change in a number multiplies the acidity 10-fold. So a pH of 5.5 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 6.5 and 4.5 is 100 times more acidic.

How do you adjust pH? Buy soil acidifier or agricultural sulfur and sprinkle it on the surface of the soil. If you have a thick layer of mulch to keep down the weeds, pull it back, then add your acidifier. Follow the directions on the bag as to how much to add once you know your soil pH. It may take two to three years to drop the soil pH to the proper level. And doing it now won’t affect this year’s crop.

What else should you do? Give your bushes room to grow. I did a single row and spaced the bushes 6 to 7 feet apart. But they are a little crowded now, 20-some years later. If I were doing it again, I’d space them farther apart. It’s best to run your row east-west rather than north-south to avoid one plant shading another. Full sun is best, but six hours of sun is adequate.

Blueberries like moisture, but don’t plant them in soggy soil. Also avoid the top of a sunny, sandy hillside. I have mine not far from my brook, and they have done very well. When planting, mix in some duff from under evergreen trees because it will help acidify the soil and will also add fungi that encourage good growth. Pine needles make a great mulch if you have some.

Blueberries do not like weeds, so do a good job of pulling out the grasses and weeds in the place you plant your berries — before you plant. And then add a good thick layer of wood chips around the plants to discourage weeds in the future.

Blueberries are pollinated by bees. And although some varieties are labeled “self-pollinating” it’s always best to plant several bushes and at least two different varieties.

There is a terrible pest that has arrived in most parts of New England, the spotted-winged drosophila. This is an Asian fruit fly that lays eggs in good fruit, as opposed to other fruit flies that only attack overripe fruit. In a matter of days, blueberries can go from healthy to mushy and full of larvae. If you cut open a berry that has been infected, you will see the small larvae. At present there is no organic method for controlling them other than covering your bushes with a fine mesh that the fruit flies can’t reach through.

If you are planting blueberries now, choose bushes that produce their fruit early in the season and avoid plants that mature later in the summer. Why? Some growers are finding that the fruit flies don’t show up early in the summer, so they are getting crops of early blueberries before the pest shows up. And buy the biggest bushes you can find — or afford. Blueberries are relatively slow-growing in our climate.

Birds can be a problem, too. I no longer cover my bushes with netting — I found too many birds got caught in the mesh, so now we just share. And unless you get a flock of cedar waxwings (which are voracious berry eaters), most birds don’t seem to be greedy. Last summer I enjoyed watching bluebirds feeding their second set of chicks with my berries.

I bet Sal (who had a close encounter with a mother bear in that wonderful book) had three kids, two girls and a boy. By now those kids would range in age 43 to 48, so her grandkids are either teenagers or in college. But I bet they all visit her in blueberry season for her wonderful pie. Her mother’s recipe, no doubt. Pie is always a good lure for grandkids, especially blueberry pie.

Henry is the author of four gardening books and is a lifelong organic gardener. Reach him by e-mail at [email protected].

Featured photo: Not all berries ripen at once, even in a cluster. Photo by Henry Homeyer.