Keeping Up with Your Garden
(Page 2 of 3)
June/July 2009
By Barbara Pleasant
Protect At-risk Crops
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Few gardeners will make it through the summer without encountering challenges from insect pests. Depending on where you live, it may be essential to use row covers to protect cucumber-family crops from squash bugs, squash vine borers and/or cucumber beetles. Cabbage-family crops (especially seedlings set out in June and July for fall harvest) require protection from cabbageworms, army worms and grasshoppers. You can use row covers made from breathable spunbound polyester (sold by most seed companies) or make your own from lightweight cloth, such as wedding net (tulle). Lightweight covers also can take the edge off of searing sunlight. The most lightweight row covers reduce light transmission by 10 percent when they are clean, and more after they get dirty. See The No-spray Way to Protect Plants to learn more about using row covers.
If insect pressure is light, you can probably manage the problem with close monitoring, handpicking, or by using an appropriate organic insecticide. The most up-to-date organic pest controls are covered in our Guide to Organic Pest Control article but don’t assume you will need to spray. In my large garden, I may use a single application of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis, a trusted old biological pesticide that gives leaf-eating caterpillars a terminal bellyache) to make sure broccoli and cabbage plants are clean of tiny caterpillars before I install a row cover. But in my experience, insect problems are either serious enough to merit use of row covers, or so minor that they can be managed by handpicking or pulling out badly infested plants.
Increase Your Bounty Through Relay Plantings
An early start in spring (including season-stretching cloches and tunnels), will set your garden up to handle relay plantings, in which space used for one crop is quickly switched to another (with a heaping helping of compost in between). For instance, many gardeners are able to follow spring lettuce with a quick crop of bush snap beans, or slip in some carrots after spring peas. In long-summer climates, garden space almost always supports two crops a year, and sometimes even three.
Finding crop relays that work for you will take some trial and error. You can consider various possibilities by checking our monthly What to Plant Now charts for your region. Also, watch what’s being harvested and planted at local organic farms, which often run tight relays. Heat-tolerant plants — such as squash, tomato and tomatillo, which are easily grown in containers — can make quick work of relay planting. For example, you could harvest the last of a lettuce bed, mix in some compost, and pop in a few summer squash seedlings within an hour.
