Garden maintenance mid-June
Have you seen big brown areas on your Swiss chard, spinach and beet greens? This is slug damageA really rainy week like the one we just had is great for the plants in your garden, and also amazing for the garden slugs.
You have a couple of options available to you for slug control. The best is regular hand-picking. Shawn killed at least 100 in our garden in one day afternoon the rains. A slug trap can help. you can also fill a small yoghurt cup with beer and bury in the garden. Make sure to empty regularly.
We now also have food grade Diatomaceous Earth available in our Garden Centre which is a powder made up of crushed diatom shells. Once sprinkled on the soil, it’s sharp particles makes your garden inhospitable to slugs and snails. It is an approved organic slug control method.
Your spinach is probably getting ready to go to seed. It gets super tall, and starts to flower. This means it wont be good for much longer, so you should harvest all of the spinach, roots and all to make space for other things in the garden.
Your beet greens are probably ready for harvest as well. Once they get large enough (about the size of the palm of your hand) you can remove the large outer leaves to add to salads or sautés.
For more information, take a look at my video.
If the roquette is getting a little spicy for your taste, consider cooking it! Here is a delicious white pizza with roquette. Roquette is also delicious as a pesto, or on a pasta.
