Cucumbers, tomatoes, beans

Organic vegetable garden

Preventing problems before they arise

You will be able to start harvesting your summer vegetables soon, if you haven’t already. Keep a look our for mature carrots, beets and cucumbers. This is a great time of year where the weather is nice, and problems in the garden have not yet set in.

As always, prevention is the best medicine. Remember that your plants need water, sun, space and nutrients to thrive. We take care of the nutrients part by starting you off with a super-rich soil mix, and adding worm castings and natural, organic fertilizers with every planting.

If you are going away on vacation, we have a vacation maintenance service. We set up a temporary irrigation system, and come by once per week to maintain your garden. Cost is 50$ per visit. Email me to book, or for more information.

To keep your plants growing their best, you need to water a lot. Water deeply every day that it is not raining. You also need to make sure every plant has the space it needs to get a good air circulation and plenty of sun. This means weeding regularly, and harvesting the leafy greens. It is time to remove the last of the lettuce and spinach if you haven’t already done so.

If you have lettuce in your garden that hasn’t turned into an alien lettuce tower monster, and it is not overcrowding other plants (peppers, eggplants, beans) you can leave it in as long as you are still enjoying it. But, if you have peppers and eggplants in your garden, chances are they will need all the space they can get by now.

Get to harvesting your snow peas! If they are already getting fat and tough and you are not enjoying them anymore, please rip out the vines and wrap the growing end of your tomatoes around the trellis to give them the support they need. If your are still enjoying your peas, you can still wait another week before removing the vines.

Make sure to remove suckers from your tomato plants. Any long branches that are overshadowing the other plants in your garden need to go. Rule of thumb: attach any branch that you can to the trellis. Anything that you don’t have room for needs to be removed.

Take a look at my video for more details

Please keep any eye out for cucumber beetle eggs, larva and beetles. Search and destroy. Same goes for slugs. Remove any leaves that are damaged or have signs of powdery mildew (white spots). Any disease, pest or fungus that stay in your garden unchecked will be much more difficult to deal with as a full blown problem.

Almost any problem in your garden can be prevented by spending 10 or 15 min per day removing sick or damaged leaves, and killing slugs, cucumber beetles and caterpillars.

Keep harvesting kale, Swiss chard, and beet greens. I usually tear them all up with a little fresh squeezed lemon juice, olive oil, ground pepper and sea salt. But here is a fun recipe for beet green chips. It will work well with kale or chard as well.

Thanks for reading!
Tereska

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