Planning for our vegetable gardens

Wells Medina in Bellevue.

Holly (MHF) should know. She does strawberries. Langley Fine Farms on Vashon might have an idea, too.

McLendon's Hardware does. They are online, you might check there.

Holly, am thinking about growing broccoli this year. How do you keep yours bug free?

Is there something we can do right now to control the slug & snail population? We can put people on the moon - it seems like we should be able to spread a little something to prevent those pesky little creatures from procreating!

Judi, somewhere way back there, we had a discussion. Maybe someone will remember what thread it was on. Julie and I plan to do a ammonia-water drench in some areas where our problem is the worst. (About a 1:6 ratio.) Have never tried the drench before but have used the solution for the baby slugs that show up soon. My hosta bed and some of the dayliliy beds are destined for treatment if the rain holds off this weekend. (Oh, my, another task in my VERY long list!)

I've been away for a few days, and not sure I can catch up with the myriad PNW posts, but I did see a few questions with my name on them.

Broccoli is sometimes bothered by 2 different pests in my garden. The first is flea beetles that munch tiny round holes in the leaves when I first set out new plants. The trick there seems to be to get the timing right and set out healthy seedlings that are well hardened off so they don't go into shock at transplanting time. That way, they quickly outgrow the beetles and not much harm is done. I have also put insect barrier cloth over them to keep the beetles away, but this can become a pain to weed under. The other pest is the cabbage butterfly that lays eggs on brassicas (cabbage family including broccoli). The resulting little green catterpillars are the same color as the broccoli leaves. I examine the undersides of leaves for the eggs and remove them, and later hand pick the caterpillars whose eggs I missed. I also inter-plant with marigold, whose smell can dissuade the butterflies from landing in the area. One can leave on the insect barrier cloth to keep off all of these insects if you don't mind dealing with adjusting the height and taking it on and off to weed. Without insect cloth, if the plants are healthy, they will simply outgrow all the micro-wildlife and you can rinse out any bugs you missed with the above deterrents before you cook the broccoli.

I have seen the bundles of bare-root strawberries at a couple of nurseries on the island here. I haven't bought any myself because I have had so many runners with new plants springing forth from my strawberry bed that I replenish that way. Jim, I would be happy to give you some if you felt like coming over on the ferry. Mine are the variety Rainier.

mauryhillfarm, I could do the runners myself , do they have the same vigor as the plants you buy from the growers? thanks for the offer, Jim

The talk about pumpkins reminded me of one day when I was giving a co-worker a ride to work and we passed a field with pumpkins in it. My co-worker, a native of Hong Kong, looked across the field and very seriously asked me how the pumpkins all came up from under the ground at exactly the same time! It was news to her that pumpkins grew on vines above the ground.........but became more visible after they had ripened to orange and the vines died back.

I can really appreciate that innocence.....I would be lost in Hong Kong!

( I am one who HAS to know the names of all the local birds, flowers, trees, etc., when I move to a new place or it doesn't feel like "home" to me!)

Marigolds and broccoli sounds like a pretty combo. I always had problems with aphids on my brassica. On another bug note, has anyone tried mushed up rhubarb for slugs? Read it somewhere and plan to give it a try. Here's the formula: Shred 3# rhubarb leaves, boil in 1 G water for 30 min, strain. Separately, boil 3 Q water with 4 oz soap flakes until dissolved. Combine together. Spray on plants susceptible to slugs.

Edit: Duh. Where I read about the rhubarb is in the 'article of the day' right here on DG...wrote it down last night on a piece of paper and forgot where I had surfed it from.

This message was edited Feb 19, 2010 7:06 AM

LFS, That's a great pumpkin story! Isn't it fun to view your everyday world through new eyes every now and again? Makes you appreciate some of the little things that you sometimes overlook because they are so "commonplace".

Talking of pumpkins, that was one of the things that I really used to love about driving home from work in the fall. We used to have a wonderful pumpkin patch right off of the freeway in Sumner, and I got a lot of joy from watching the pumpkins "color up", and then watching the patch get ready for the pumpkin sales (hundreds of pumpkins now lined up in row after row and all the foilage hauled off). Now that area is a car dealership and a warehouse. Pooh.

Bonehead, my only experience with brocolli involved an aphid issue as well, and that totally turned me off from growing it. I don't mind washing my fruits and vegies to get bugs off, and lord knows that I have inadvertently eaten more bugs and dirt over the years than most people would consider acceptable, but I just couldn't get comfortable that I had washed all of the little buggers out of the brassica and I couldn't eat it comfortably.

Will be curious to hear about the results of the rhubarb slug concoction! Thanks to someones' pictures ^_^, I am planning on putting in a few rhubarb plants just for foilage this year, so by next year I should be able to make my own mix if it is effective!

I will definitely report back on the rhubarb mix, hoping it works.

Re veggies, I live just south of the Skagit Flats and have a good seasonal produce market about a mile from my place run by a very nice local guy. He also has a small nursery and frozen fish/shrimp/oysters. Sometimes garden benches. I do my part to keep him in business. Also am friends with an organic farming family (Rent's Due Ranch), although they always give me stuff free so I try not to take advantage of that.

I love to grow lettuces organically, especially gourmet and butter lettuces. In fact years ago when we moved in, I removed landscaping for a vegetable garden along the walkway in front of the house. I grow just about anything I can find and have had great success with heading types as well. My recent favorite lettuces are:
Drunken woman's fuzzy- headed
Yugoslavian red butter head
Freckles - a delightfully sweet cos type
I have tried growing broccoli but have been unable to find the "perfect conditions" for it to grow successfully without using a lot of pesticides to combat the aphids, the same is true with Brussels sprouts.
I am always on the lookout for a short season productive tomato with excellent flavor. Last year I grew:
Bloody butcher
Tamina
Sweet 100
I have had great success in previous years with Big Momma a highly productive paste type and plan to grow it again this year. Great grilled with basil, olive oil and garlic.

Azorina - what fun names -- love 'em. I think I must make room for drunken woman's fuzzy head somewhere in my herbs.

I grew a small patch of lettuces last year and loved them. I plan to grow more this year. And spinach. The spinach was so good. I would love to be able to control slugs with that rhubarb concoction!

Sharon, last year I used an ammonia and water spray on slugs in the early morning, so today I am planning to drench the areas where there are tender plants that make a nice snack for those dreaded creatures. Thank you for the info!

Linda, I think that you may start a riot on "drunken woman's fuzzy head" lettuce seeds. There are some things that you simply MUST grow just because of the name!

Deb, Seasonal produce markets are the best! We have one that is fairly close to us that we use often, and then in EWA, well... upicks and roadside stands and of course Tonnemakers organic produce.... all in the Royal City area within 10 miles of our vacation home. PURE HEAVEN!

So many great ideas.....and great names. I'll be on the lookout for the unusual this year, not just the tried and true.

I had forgotten about the ammonia water solution for slugs. Thanks for the reminder, as slug season might start early with the warmer than usual temperatures.

I think the marigolds could deter the aphids as well. I have only had significant trouble with them when my plants get heat or drought stressed.

Jim, the strawberry runners have done just fine for me, though they need a year to get settled in before they go into major production.

Holly, I hate to tell you this, but it IS ALREADY slug season! I have been squirting and chopping the little buggers right and left as I have been working in the garden.

AAaaaghhh!! They are out there having a field day while I have been at my mom's house helping her downsize to move to a smaller apartment. I was outside today beginning on the weed takeover, but did not see too many slugs. They were probably hiding in the mulch waiting for their favorite evening forage time. I saw damage on the iris leaves. Do slugs eat iris?

Iris is a slug delicacy, especially when they put up the bloom stalk. My iris are one of the things that are going to get an ammonia drench. I have way more damage to my daylily leaves this spring than I usually do because I don't think that the little buggers ever went into hibernation. I have found zillions (remember, I have a BIG slug issue) on the maple leaves that I have been raking out of the gardens. The plus side is that they stick to the leaves, which I am grinding up into mulch, so it has helped the slug picking quite a bit.

Sounds yummy

And if you have any asters, they will be all over them in a most destructive way.
Ammonia shower - they need it.

Katye, can I add Sun Sugar yellow cherry tomatoes? They are wonderful.

You sure can!

I can hardly wait for those sun-warmed tomatoes right off the vine.......

me too. I purchased some "vine ripened" toms at the local grocer. They must be hydroponic - absolutely beautiful but absolutely tasteless.

If i had a GH, i would be growing them year-round & pay through the nose for the energy bill. So worth it.

marking

Hello beebonnet!

Hi beebonnet. Come on in.

Katye, I doubt very much that those were hydroponic tomatoes. Greenhouse yes, but not hydroponics. Last year I bought, for the very first time, hydroponic tomatoes. They were the closest in flavor to what we can grow in our gardens. I spoke with a fellow in a hydroponic store about that and he said that was all in picking the right nutrients. Because the hydroponic tomatoes were grown in a greenhouse also.

I did pay $3 a pound for them but only bought enough for a BLT. In having a good BLT in March or April it was like having a good ribeye steak. So, yes, you have not only the cost of the heat (energy) but also the expensive nutrients.

Also, do not be taken in by those so called "vine ripened" tomatoes. They are picked green and a piece of the vine is left on while they ripen. That is not the same as what we grow in our gardens and ripen on our vines.

Thanks for the nice welcome. Does anyone grow onions? So far I have started some Walla Wallas, Pacific Pearl, He Shi Ko scallions, Copra, and a new one to me, Borrettana.
I started them in my cool greenhouse Before I broke my right arm. Now they are up and growing fast. Good thing onions can stay in their flats quite awhile because it will be awhile before they will get transplanted.
I can hunt and peck pretty good with my left now.
Soon I want to start my tomatoes with the help of my DH.
The drench and the rhubarb concoction sound great. I have sprayed them on site with 1/2 and 1/2 for years, but never thought to do a drench.

Rarejem, Instead of the ammonia drench I think you should get a couple of ducks. They will clean up the slugs so good. I guess you can follow them around with a hose to wash all their fertilizer down into your plants.

I am serious. If you have the right kind of duck, they don't all do that, like the white ones, I am not sure they eat slugs, but I had a brown one years ago and whenever I was outside working in the flowerbeds and found any slugs I would just call Pete and that duck would come flapping and squawking from wherever he was 'cause he knew I had a treat for him.

After cleaning up my yard he spread out to the neighbors. They actually put out tubs full of water for him, trying to lure him to their yards. He really did the whole neighborhood until a mail truck ran over him.

It was 3 years before I had slugs. Yup, that was in Seattle.

Jnette - the store I buy them at has a sign up for the tomatoes that are grown hydroponically: their way of advertising their product and trying to introduce folks to produce grown in this manner. These were in the same "bin", same name as the ad sign. Not all things grown hydroponically are of lesser quality, didn't mean to imply that except to these toms. Not all growers have the same standards, either.
As far as vine ripened, no problem. I grow lots of toms every year & nothing beats those which are truly ripened on the vine.

I guess my question Katye would be that if they can get that flavor hydroponically (the ones I had) with certain nutrients, then why can't they do it with greenhouse grown, i.e. in soil in the greenhouse?

Do you know what I mean? I certainly would not pay $3 per pound very often. But, last year I tried growing a couple of tomato plants hydroponically in my kitchen (I do have a pretty big kitchen) in 5 gallon buckets. It was very interesting. If I had a place, like a greenhouse, to do that same thing in, rather than my kitchen, I would certainly try to perfect my system. LOL, needless to say, I got real tired of them in there. It was fun trying tho.

Last year I delved real far into a website about that very thing, and there was a picture in it of a field of tomato plants growing in 16 oz cups and they had full grown plants with a lot of ripe tomatoes on them. They had pvc piping running to each one with the water and nutrients running thru them. It was so interesting. Yes, 16 oz cups.

Every so often there would be a reservoir of the water and nutrients. Now, I want you to know that I am being very simplistic in my description.

Jnette - I believe it is a matter of which variety is grown. Most toms grown for commercial purposes have a thicker skin that will handle the shipping portion of their lives. When hybridized for certain qualities, other areas suffer. Flavour being one.
I have done some research on hydroponics - it can be done successfully, just as growing in soil. But if the general perspective is that consumers will settle for "less", then most likely that's what will be made available. My question for research was the cost factor. Time will tell.
I'll still grow my own!

Yes, I will too, but if I can get some from the same place I did before I will buy enough for that BLT in March or April. :o)

oh geez - this is the time of year i crave them.
I would like to be able to grow them indoors, and if I allotted space to them, it might work with the grow lights i have. But they do get so very large...

Yup, gettin' there.

But if we could grow delicious toms indoors year round, wouldn't that take away from the absolute pleasure of biting into the first great tomato of the season? I do wish the tom season was a bit longer, though.

No - it's always a pleasure!!! Plus eating toms is important for my general health & sanity, so it merits a higher rating. Although I would not stop at toms: there'd be peppers, eggplant, and beans. Ok, so I'll have to just be in the season. Planting potatoes & peas next week...just not the same biting into the first pea pod... =:0)