Episode 13 of my podcast is up and can be found at my Podbean page! Or wherever you listen to podcasts. :) This is part one of a three part series so stay tuned for more gardening goodness.
SOURCES:
The Bountiful Container, Rose Marie Nichols McGee & Maggie Stucky
100 Plants to Feed the Bees, The Xerces Society (https://xerces.org/)
Vegetables Love Flowers, Lisa Marie Ziegler
Backyard Harvest, Jo Whittingham
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What I want to grow:
Tomatoes (cherry and regular/salad)
Bell peppers
Basil
Borage
Climbing rose
Sunflowers
Lavender
Mints
What I’m considering (time allowing):
Rosemary
Lemon Balm
Chamomile
3 sisters (corn/beans/squash)
Leafy greens (kale, collards, mustard, etc)
Parsnips
Pasture plants (alfalfa/clover/vetch)
Catnip
Goldenrod
Preparation:
branch/debris clean up
Mulch leaves
Turn leaf/compost pile
Chicken clean up; add to compost
New hive stand
Visual block for hives
New beds (in ground, raised, containers)
Weed
Wood mulch on beds
Wildflower straw mix on side garden
Wildflower seed bombs for lawn
Finish path in back yard
Milky Spore application to lawn (Japanese beetles)
MOW!
Key things to consider for your garden beds:
Light
Soil quality
Drainage & rainfall
Access to water
Accessible to you
Visually appealing
TOMATOES
Member of the nightshade family (potatoes, peppers, eggplants).
Native to Central and South America
Annuals (transplants recommended).
Sun loving!
Harvest season: late summer, early Fall
Minimum soil depth: 12 inches
Two kinds:
1/ Indeterminate (aka vining)
Main stem grows to 6ft+
Needs support
Pinch tip when reaches desired height
Moderate pruning needed
2/ Determinate (aka bush)
No pinching out
Usually 2-3ft tall
Side shoots develop and spread out (bushy!)
Often mature earlier
Great for containers
Minimal/no pruning
Three main sizes:
cherry
regular/salad
beefsteak
Starting with seeds
Start seeds indoors, somewhere warm, using a sterile seed-starting mix, 6-8 weeks ahead of the Spring frost date. I went to the Farmer’s Almanac website to see when that was for my location. According to them, my area of Ohio has its last Spring frost date on May 2nd, and the first Fall frost on October 13th. The growing season is approx. 163 days. These are all estimates based on prior years but are a standard guideline for growers.
When your seedlings have 2-3 sets of leaves, move them to larger pots with a deeper substrate. Good light is essential during this early growth period, and you are likely to need grow lights.
Transplants
My personal choice and what I have experience with!
Look for stocky plants with rich, green leaves; avoid any that seem leggy, scraggly, or pale. Plants can be safely moved outside when night temps are consistently above 55F. Be mindful that they might need hardening off before going in the ground/your outdoor container.
Success with tomatoes
Tomatoes need support! Even a determinate plant in a container will need some kind of stake or cage to help it manage the weight of the fruit.
They love water! Be mindful that the required heavy watering of tomatoes will quickly wash away nutrients in the soil in your containers so you must feed your plants. In ground plants will also benefit from regular feeding through the growing season.
Look for a food that is not heavy in nitrogen; you want fruit, not huge leaves (liquid seaweed is a good option, and can be fed every 2-4 weeks).
Potential problems
1/ Blossom-end rot
Steady, even watering can help prevent
Never let the soil dry out completely (extra care needed for containers)
May be related to a lack of calcium in soil so consider adding a little agricultural lime or crushed egg shells when transplanting
2/ Blight
early/late
Fungal disease
Lives in infected soil
Leaves develop brown spots and the whole plant quickly rots
Very hard to eradicate but can try a fungicide treatment
Keep plants well spaced to allow good air circulation
Remove all plant debris from bed at the end of the season
3/ Skin cracking
Skin forms cracks and eventually splits open
Due to uneven watering
4/ Cutworms
Rarely see them, just the result; stem sliced off just above soil line, causing the plant to fall over
Dig around base of plant and look for brownish caterpillar looking worms; remove them and dispose of in soapy water
Put down fresh soil before putting in new plant
5/ Tomato hornworms
Chunky, striped, horned in appearance
Eat right through tomatoes and leaves
Pick them off by hand
They make really good reptile food but purge their system by keeping them inside and feeding only vegetation that you know has not been treated with pesticides for 5-7 days before offering to your reptiles
Harvesting your tomatoes
Indeterminate plants will ripen from the bottom up, whereas determinate types ripen almost simultaneously. Fully green tomatoes will not ripen if you pick them and bring them inside; you want to wait until the first blush of colour changing if you want them to ripen off the vine. Once the weather dips below 40F, you are unlikely to see further ripening and might be forced to harvest green tomatoes. But these are delicious fried and served hot!
Companion plants
These are plants that complement your edibles in some way, either by keeping pests away, attracting pollinators, or using nutrients in the soil that are not a priority for your veggies and fruits.
Some options for your tomatoes include:
Amaranth (sun loving; attracts pollinators)
Basil (sun loving; attracts pollinators)
Borage (said to repel tomato hornworms)
Bee balm (pollinators)
Mint (pollinators)
Garlic
Marigolds/calendula (acts as a trap plant for aphids; beautiful cut flowers that can be harvest twice a week during peak growth season)
It is recommended that you avoid planting tomatoes with other members of the nightshade family, such as peppers, potatoes, and eggplant; as well as cabbage, beats, peas, fennel, and dill.
Pollinators!
Tomatoes can self-pollinate but rely on the wind to do this. Bumble bees and other ‘buzz pollinators’ can speed up the pollination process when they visit tomato plants. When landing on the flower, bumble bees vibrate rapidly, forcibly expelling the pollen trapped inside.
Other ‘buzz pollinators’ that visit tomatoes includes carpenter bees and mud bees. Some sweat bees (a small, shiny, native bee) also act as pollinators but chew through the flower base to get to the pollen.
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PEPPERS
Annuals
12-16 inches in height
Transplants recommended
Harvest season: late summer
Full sun
Minimum soil depth: 8 inches
Peppers are one of my favourite vegetables! So many varieties; all different sizes and shapes and colours. Their appearance is so popular that a number of ornamental varieties are now available for jazzing up your beds, containers, and windowsills.
All peppers start green and achieve their final, genetically programmed colour as they ripen. Green peppers are therefore the earliest harvested peppers, and common in areas with short growing seasons, as peppers need lots of sun and warmth to ripen.
Starting with seeds
Growing peppers from seeds can be quite tricky. To start with, they seeds need to germinate at 80F for 2 weeks, and then need 6-8 more weeks before they’re ready to be transplanted. You will need to harden your young plants before moving them outside, and you must wait for the night temps to consistently be above 55F with day temps a minimum of 70F. If you plant too soon, cool weather will kill them outright; plant too late, and you can miss the season (and thereby get stuck with nothing but green peppers).
Transplants
Great for lazy me!
When shopping for your pepper plants, avoid those that are tall, leggy, or pale. Avoid being tempted by plants already flowering or fruiting; transplanting at this point will shock the plant and stop the growth. If you can only find flowering transplants, remove all flowers before planting. Transplants might need some cover at night for the first week or so, depending on your local temps. Better to err on the side of caution with this warm-loving plant.
Success with peppers
Keep them warm! But excessive heat (95F+) will kill them so move them to shade for part of the day during heat waves.
Use a phospherous rich fertilizer
Peppers also benefit from 3 micronutrients: sulfar (epsom salts), calcium (lime or egg shells), and magnesium (epsom salts).
Potential Problems
1/ Aphids
Suck juices from plants, killing them
Prefer tender, new growth
Sometimes transmit disease
Knock them off with the hose or by hand
Insecticidal soap can be used (DIY: dish soap, oil, water)
Look for ants marching into your container and/or base of plant; they are attracted to a sweet secretion of the aphids
2/ Flea beetles
Size of flea (hence name)
Eat tiny holes in leaves
Hard to get rid of
Row cover, raising containers, and keeping plant debris away from base of plant all help to prevent them
3/ ToMV (Tomato mosiac virus) & TMV (Tobacco mosiac virus)
Pathogenic virus
Symptoms include blistering on surface of leaves and stem, fern-like leaves, brown and necrotic spots
Host plants include nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, potatoes) as well as petunias, snapdragons, delphinium, and marigolds.
Once plant is infected, there is no cure.
Look for resistant varieties of peppers
Harvesting
The more peppers you pick, the more they produce! So harvest green peppers early in the season, and enjoy them raw in salads, or saute and add to curries, pasta, etc. Later in the summer, let the peppers ripen to their final colours, and enjoy a colourful harvest. Use scissors or clippers to neatly cut the stem when harvesting.
A note on hot peppers:
It is the concentration of capsaicin that gives peppers their fire! The heat level of peppers is measured in Scoville units; named after the inventor of this system of measurement, Wilbur Scoville. Hot peppers vary greatly in heat. To give an idea, the popular jalapeno pepper has a listed heat level of 2500-5000 Scoville units, whereas the Super Chile pepper (an all American winner) has a listed level of 37,500 Scoville units!!
HERBS FOR YOUR GARDEN
BASIL
Annual
1-2ft
Full sun
Seeds or transplants
Harvest season: summer
Minimal soil depth: 8 inches
So many varieties!
Good border plant, especially with tomatoes
Success with basil
Use a potting soil with some sand and dolomite lime mixed in
Allow to go slightly dry between waterings
Don’t overwater
Feed at planting and again mid-summer with a high nitrogen food
To keep bushy, pinch off inch or so of growing tip as each new branch develops
Wait until night temps are reliably above 50F, or cover at night
Cold temps will stop growth, and even a small frost will kill it outright
Harvesting
Snip off leaves
Regular harvesting increases production
As Fall approaches, you can dig up plants, place in small container, and bring inside to a warm, sunny spot
Pollinators
White flowers are very attractive to pollinators!
Lemon basil, a hybrid with larger, showier flowers, is particularly attractive to bugs
Basil is a great ‘insectary strip’ plant: “row of quick-flowering annuals sown between food crops to attract beneficial insects for pollination and pest control” (‘100 Plants to Feed the Bees’ by The Xerces Society)
Attracts bumble bees, small sweat bees, aphid-eating syrphid flies, tiny beneficial wasps, and honey bees!
BORAGE
Annual
2-3ft+
Seeds or transplants
Full sun
Harvest season: Spring through Fall
Minimum soil depth: 8 inches
Just one species: borage officinalis
Borage is an aggressive, self-sowing annual plant, native to the Mediterranean, which might explain why it is so beloved by the European honey bee! When planted in the ground, borage is a very large, multi-branched plant with big, hollow stems covered in bristly, silver hairs. It is better behaved in a container, which prevents it from reaching its full growth, without inhibiting flower production. The flowers are what makes borage so special. Not only are they beautiful in appearance (star shaped and a stunning blue colour) but they also produce a sugar-rich nectar that honey bees adore.
Both the flowers and leaves of this plant are edible. Flowers are popular with bakers, who crystallize them and use them to decorate cakes. Tender, new leaves (before the bristles form) are an excellent addition to salads due to their cucumber-like flavour. Please note that some people respond to the alkaloids in the leaves so try a few first before going all out!
Borage will spread out and hog space so be sure that you have the room available before putting into the ground. If space is limited, plant in a container to control its growth. The Bountiful Container book recommends the following plants for a “sensational mixed planter”:
Borage
Bronze fennel (planted at the center)
Soft yellow flowers around the edges (such as Moongleam nastartiums or Lemon Gem marigolds)
Paint the planter/container royal blue to complement the colour arrangement and emphasize the blue Borage flowers
Success with borage
Cut back regularly
Can grow in even poor soil so needs very little
All-purpose potting soil and minimal fertilizer recommended to start
Feed when planting then leave unless it seems to be struggling
Don’t over water
Don’t be afraid to prune or cut back
Keep flowers picked to encourage more growth
Stagger seeding dates for longer bloom periods
Pollination
I only knew of borage as a bee-friendly plant; I had no idea it was edible for us too! Borage is such a wonderful pollinator plant because:
The sugar content of its nectar is 52% (that produces a dark honey)
It secretes nectar throughout the day, and even into cold weather
It feeds bumblebees and our beloved honey bees!
Interesting side note: butterflies and other flower visitors don’t tend to feed from borage.
CHAMOMILE
Annual or perennial
3-9 or 10-12 inches (perennial); 1-2ft (annual)
Seeds or transplants
Full sun to partial shade
Minimum soil depth: 8 inches
Harvest season: late Summer, early Fall
Popular for its use as a tea, and an ingredient in cosmetics (particularly skin and hair care).
If you’re allergic to ragweed or chrysanthemums, you might also be allergic to chamomile
There are two main varieties:
1/ German chamomile
Annual
Small, upright shrub with small, daisy-like flowers
Self-seeding
Drought resistant
Best for tea and cosmetics
2/ Roman chamomile
Perennial
Small, spreading mounds that stay low to the ground
Flowers identical to German variety
Has the sweeter scent/fragrance but brews bitter when used for tea
Great ground covering plant
Tolerates some foot traffic
Starting from seed
Easily started from seed
Seeds are very tiny so don’t sow too deep
Don’t let substrate dry out
Roman chamomile seeds germinate best in warm soil (70F)
German chamomile seeds prefer cooler soil (55F)
Seedlings tend to emerge within 10 days
Transplants
Nothing special needed!
Usual waiting until after frost risk has passed, and night temps are warmer (50F)
Harvesting
For use in tea and cosmetics, it is the flowers that are needed (not the leaves or stems). Chamomile flowers are made up of two parts. The yellow center is made up of many tiny, densely packed flowers. It is this center part that contains the pollen, and is harvested for our use. The white outer flowers are ‘ray flowers’; they look pretty but are not used in products.
Flowers are ripe when the petals begin to curl back towards the center; usually in late summer and early Fall. Petals must dry before use, and you can dry the whole flower first before separating the yellow and white petals, or before drying. Whatever feels easiest to you.
Potential Problems
Chamomile is overall a hardy and pest resistant plant but it can be vulnerable to powdery mildew. It is most at risk of this during prolonged hot and humid weather. Aphids, thrips, and mealy bugs can sometimes be an issue, and can be treated with an insecticidal soap.
Beneficial Companions
Brassicas (broccoli, kale, cabbages, etc)
Onions
Beans
Cucumbers
Also a beautiful additional to your herb garden!
Pollinators
I couldn’t find direct sources for the following claim but I found that many articles listed chamomile flowers as being attractive to hoverflies, beneficial wasps, lady bugs, and honey bees.
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And that’s it for this week! Please join me in 2 weeks for episode 14, where I will discuss a few more herbs, salad gardens, leafy greens, and parsnips.
As always, I love to hear from you, and you can find me at Homsteadhensandhoney on Instagram and Facebook; and HomesteadHens on Twitter and Tumblr. Drop me a line at homesteadhensandhoney@gmail.com, or leave a comment on this post!
Thank you so much for reading!