It has occurred to me that it has been quite some time since we last played “what’s up with my vegetable?” Being as how it’s summer. A very hot summer at that and my garden is having plenty of issues of it’s own I think this would be an excellent time to showcase all the things that could go wrong with your vegetables. Lucky for you all I have plenty of specimens to use as examples from my own field.
First off are tomatoes. Everyone always wants to grow a beautiful, juicy tomato. Here is the typical story. You realize that any day now your tomatoes should be ripening. So you take a stroll out to the garden only to find (insert scary music here) something has made it to your tomatoes before you.
How dare they sample that garden goodness right as it happened to ripen? Well in order to fix the situation you are going to need to figure out exactly what has been doing the damage and figure out how to prevent it in the future. Let’s say your tomato has a sizable hole out of it, sizable as in the size of an animals mouth. I would venture to say that you have been visited not by the garden fairy but by a raccoon, squirrel or groundhog. All have been known to take just a big enough bite out of our tomatoes just too ruin them. While I am a fan of convincing animals to “relocate” you could deter them a number of ways. You can use a smelly concoction such as deer off, you could yell at them and use idle threats or you could do whatever sort of “trapping” it is that you feel comfortable with. Whatever you do, don’t just let the problem continue. Otherwise you will end up with zero tomatoes and the animals will be tickled pink that you planted Brandywines this year.
Next up, there is a weird tunneling look going on with my tomato. Well here is a shocker, something may indeed have tunneled into your tomato. Be it a cutworm, hornworm or grub no one likes a tomato that has a worm in it. Unless you are practicing for that fear factor show. Which if that’s the case stop by the farm and I will give you plenty of your very own hornworms… Fun times. The only preventative for this is to keep a more watchful eye on your plants. You could sprinkle the ground with diamatious earth which will cut the underside of any soft bodied insect. But remember this will not help if the insect you are fending off was produced from an egg that was laid on the plants leaves and at no time will that bug venture down to the soil below. No worries, it’s nothing that a sharp pair of pruners won’t fix.
Onwards to the “Oh goodness I picked a tomato and it looked great from the top only to find that the bottom was rotted out.” Yes this is a devastating one for sure. Most often this would be blossom end rot. Which is caused by a calcium deficiency in tomatoes. Hit the poultry section of the feed store and pick up some oyster shell and you can remedy this one quickly by mixing some into the soil tight around the base of your plant. Eggshells work well too.
My tomatoes keep splitting and I can’t quite figure out why…. Well this one has to usually do with fluctuations in moisture. If you mulch around your plants it lessens your chances of split tomatoes. Now of mulch isn’t your thing then be sure to march out to your tomatoes anytime you hear a measurable rain is coming and start picking anything with color. Otherwise that moisture hitting the ground is going to pump up the growth rate on ripening tomatoes and you guessed it SPLIT EM’. It’s ok, you can eat split tomatoes just try to get to them quick.
Gosh aren’t tomatoes fun? But not everyone is a tomato fanatic like me so I will move on to another vegetable you may have growing. How’s about those beans? Let me begin by preaching to you how you should NEVER go near your bean plants if the leaves are wet. If you call me and tell me your beans are dying and you don’t know why and you remember me telling you a gazillion times not to go near beans if the leaves are wet, I may be inclined to flip out on you. So please stay clear of wet leaved beans. Outside of that you may notice some spotting on your beans if they happen to be a little heavy on the plants and touching the ground. This is known as rust. It’s pretty gross and I myself do not eat the beans with rust. A good way to avoid rust is to spread a layer of straw down as ground covering around your beans and keep the beans from having contact with the ground.
Squash is another fun filled vegetable that drives me crazy. One day your plants are monsters and producing more zucchini than you could feed to an army and the next day the plants doubled over and all yellow and on the verge of death. By golly if I had to take a stab at it I would say you have just been attacked by squash borers. And when I say take a stab at it, you really should. Take a knife or sharp pruners and find the circled hole near the base. Slice that open and behold that somewhere in the near vicinity will be a squash borer. If you can’t kill it, be sure to find someone who can. They will over winter in the soil if you leave them be and plague you for years to come. When you plant your squash plants next year be sure to mound the soil up around the crown of the plant to leave less surface area of the plant for the moth to lay it’s eggs on.
Now that you have had a basic primer in day by day gardening with Sacha you can begin to diagnose what is going on in your own garden. If you are still at a loss, because believe me problems outside of the above mentioned do occur feel free to contact the extension office and make use of the Master Gardeners and the Hort Hotline. These folks can figure out any garden dilemma. Also on that note if you too would like to become a master gardener there are still a few openings for this years class. Beginners, in between and experts are all invited to come and learn how to help others grow. I took this class twelve years ago and it has formed a great base for me to expand on. Not to mention those gardeners sure know how to make some delectable dishes. The class is worth going to if just for the food alone. So if you are interested hit up the extension office located by the fairgrounds and sign up today.
