2021 garden thread

[labradors]

lolotsung, I wonder if your carrots are getting too much nitrogen. They don't need it, apparently. I'm not good at growing carrots because of thick clay soil, but I am trying again with different varieties this year. Beans are so easy to grow, but maybe you need to add an inoculant to your soil the first year.

Linda

[labradors]

WLLady, sorry to hear about the mice!

Last year, a friend emailed me to ask why her nicotiana seeds (which are really tiny) had grown so big. She sent me a picture of the germinating seedlings which looked just like Morning Glory. It turned out that some mice had been having fun in her greenhouse, moving the MG to her nicotiana seed-starting tray! Maybe they preferred them ......

Linda

[WLLady]

"melty" cucumbers sounds like wilt or blight to me.....OR cutworms.....cutworms will chew through plants at the base (usually just at or below the soil level) and a seemingly wonderfully healthy plant collapses overnight and is dead. i wrap the base of all my plants that get transplanted out. just with row cover that i cut/tear into strips. wrap the stem up about 2 inches above the ground and an inch below. when they find they cannot chew through the row cover they just move to the next plant. and they do it all at night when my chickens are sleeping.

if you have a plant - usually squash - die suddenly in the middle of the summer when it was seemingly healthy that's squash borer. the adults are black and red weird looking moths, and they lay their eggs on the stem at the soil line and the larva tunnels into the plant and eats it from the inside out. once the water stops flowing up the stem because of the ugly white grub in there, it's dead. the row cover wrap helps a bit, but usually i just check the plants for sawdust around the stems, and if i find some i take my jackknife, slide the stem lengthwise and skewer the grub and dig it out. the plant will usually recover if found early enough. otherwise i'll just bury the center of the plant with dirt, and it puts out more roots above the grub and seems to survive.

carrots....i can't even get them to germinate! but all tops and no bottoms can be 2 things....1) too much nitrogen/manure or 2) very dense soil-like hard clay type soil. carrots like a sandy loose soil for sure.

[Killerbunny]

asparagus is just starting to appear. @Farrier1987 your strawberries and raspberries cme through the winter well
and are going gangbusters - thanks again!

[WLLady]

i checked yesterday and my rhubarb is up a foot. no asparagus yet...but it honestly cannot be far behind! can't wait! the garlic is a foot tall too....trying to evict chickens from the garden is like, well, herding chickens...um. they moved to new digs last night. out of the barn and into the outside coop. Still need to fence a pen around the coop, but i'm done with the chicken all over everything in the barn. they have been roosting on the top of the shelves and all my extra equipment and live traps and everything is just covered in . so time for the eviction. They won't like it after free ranging the entire winter, but they'll stop ripping my hay bales apart and hopefully i can get the barn cleaned out and get everything pressure washed and clean again. the rats had literally eaten the floor out of the coop, so we put down hardware cloth wire on the entire thing, and then another layer of ply wood (thank goodness we had ply from some shipping crates! and didn't have to buy any!). the ply is over the wire, so they can eat the old floor to their heart's content and then hit the wire and bugger off. i'm so done with them. i just need to get my hands on a good rat dog....although my dog FINALLY showed some hunting prowess on sunday for the first time in her life, and actually chased one out of the barn! good girl. hoping next time she'll catch it and kill it. then i found one in my composter, so tonight the composter gets emptied and spread into the garden. have a little bit of lime to go into the garden too....not a lot, since my dirt is just at 7....but a tiny bit just to knock it back to 6.5. have a pile of manure to spread in the field too sometime. All the raspberries are leafing out, and the cherry trees in bloom. And i refuse to feel guilty with the chickens staring out the door of the coop at me "let me out!". flatly refuse!!!!!

[Killerbunny]

SO @WLLady DH wants to know - if one DOES have asparagus shoots coming up should one cover it with straw for the next couple of days frosts????

[WLLady]

Yes, bury it nice and deep with straw all fluffed up, or, shovel dirt over the spears if they aren't up too far. They should be okay down to about -5 or so (before windchill) if you bury them deep with the straw. the big thing is to hold in the heat from the ground so they don't freeze. if they do freeze cut them off right away below the ground. If you don't cut them off the root will think it's still cold and will take a couple weeks to recover. if you cut the frozen spear off right away the root will be non the wiser and won't delay regrowth. Mine aren't up yet, thankfully (as of yesterday) but i think i'm going to need either a second heater in the greenhouse, a pile of hot water in jugs or putting blankets over the racks with the heater running underneath tonight and tomorrow. sigh. i hope the weather report is wrong, but they've actually been scary accurate this year so far in my area. and we are the lucky north shore of lake erie with at least 10cm of fluffy white forecasted overnight.

[Jaye]

Should I be adding mulch to my garlic patch as well?

[Ontario Chick]

Garlic survives happily under snow, I wouldn't bother covering it.
Anything tender can also be covered by Rubbermaid bin or a bucket, serves as a mini greenhouse for couple of days of protection.
Aded benefit with asparagus, you may get a lovely white asparagus growth :)

[Jaye]

Thanks, @Ontario Chick . Good to know. They are not very tall yet (only about 2 - 2 1/2" high), which is why I was a bit concerned.