How to identify and treat tomato problems

The hot, wet weather at this time of year is a perfect recipe for all kinds of fungal and bacterial diseases in the garden. Tomato and Cucumber plants are particularly susceptible due to their fuzzy leaves.

The most common tomato problems are leaf spot or early blight, late blight, and bacterial wilt. The simplest organic treatment is – as always – your presence in the garden. Remove any affected leaves, practice good hygiene and keep the garden clean and weeded. You can also spray plants with 3% hydrogen peroxide to kill any spores. To see more check out my video.

If your snow pea vines have started to die off and brown at the bottom, they will not be producing much more. Remove the snow pea vines and attach the tomato vines to the trellis. Snow peas should be harvested young and flat – as soon as they get to be 2 – 3″ long. Harvest early and often before they get tough and bitter.

To keep your basil plants bushy, remove an entire section of leaves at a time. You will see two sets of smaller leaves on the stem – those will become entire branches post harvest. This will make your entire plant much bushier. To see how, check out my video.

If your roquette (arugula) has gone to seed with long stalks and yellow flowers, follow the stem down as far as you can and cut all flowering stalks. This will keep the plant producing nice big spicy leaves longer. Use on home made pizza or in pasta sauces or in a pesto. Want to see it done, watch my video.

You can harvest beet greens as soon as the leaves are big enough by cutting the larger outer leaves and letting the inner leaves grow. Some beets might be ready to harvest. To find out which ones, simply stick your finger in the soil explore around the root to judge the size. Same goes for carrots, but those probably wont be ready for a while still. Carrot greens are great as an addition to cooking as well as fresh salads.

This Saturday and Sunday only from 12-4pm

Heirloom organic tomatoes seedlings and fresh herbs will be available for sale for ONLY 2$! This is an opportunity not to be missed to make some delicious additions to your garden or add some extra greenery to a space. We hope to see you there!

Happy Gardening!

Harvesting cool weather crops, caring for warm weather crops

The more sensitive lettuces and spinach are starting to bolt with the onset of some warmer weather. This means that the plant gets super tall and starts flowering and setting seedpods. It is time to pull out these plants and enjoy the leaves before they become tough and bitter.

If you have snow peas, you will start harvesting soon, if you haven’t already. Harvest early and often. The peas are tastiest young, and the more you harvest the more peas you will get. Once the pea vines start to yellow and die at the bottom, it is time to remove them to make room for the tomatoes on the trellis.

If you don’t have any snow peas, you can attach your tomato plants to the trellis right away by wrapping the growing tip around the trellis string. You can take a look at my video for more instructions. Make sure to remove any suckers (extra vines found in the crotch between the main vine and the leaf) so that the tomato plants don’t over run the garden. Each plant needs enough sun to grow.

Your cucumbers will start to flower. Each vine has a male and a female flower. The female flower has a baby cucumber attached to it. For that cucumber to grow, pollinators need to bring male pollen into the female flower. If your baby cucumbers are withering and falling off the vine, it is because they are not being pollinated sufficiently. Same goes for squash, zucchini or melon. If you do not have enough insect activity and are losing your fruit, you can hand pollinate with a soft paint brush.

Check cucumber leaves for traces of downy mildew or powdery mildew. Remove any affected leaves and wash hands and tools before and after maintenance. If your cucumber vines are not wrapping themselves around the trellis, you can gently bring the vines to the trellis and get them started. Same goes for the bean vines.

If your pepper or eggplants plants are falling over, you should prop them up with a stake so they are standing up straight. Cabbage and Broccoli should be ready in the next few weeks. You can remove large outer leaves if they are in the way of other plants and use them in sautés. Keep an eye on broccoli, and harvest the head before the flower opens. Smaller side shoots will be ready to harvest in about three weeks.

If you have potatoes, they should be tall and lush by now. If they are falling over, you can remove the bottom leaves and hill up the soil as much as the raised beds will allow. This will increase the amount of roots, and can increase harvests.

Once asparagus spears become thin, let them grow into nice feathery fronds. Keep the asparagus bed weeded and watered so that the plant can restock stores for next spring.

Keep watch for pests – slugs, potato beetles, cucumber beetles, cabbage moth caterpillars and leaf miners. Remove any damaged or diseased leaves to get out ahead of downy mildew (brown spots) or powdery mildew. Keep on weeding, and watering (if it ever stops raining!) for a happy, healthy and productive garden.

10 to 15 minutes per day of checking for pests and disease

Keep on harvesting! Pick those peas, enjoy the lettuce before it goes to seed keep Kale and Chard under control by removing large outer leaves. You can remove the large outer leaves of cabbage and broccoli as well. These are delicious shredded as a coleslaw, or in a sauté or stir-fry.

The fruit season is upon us as well. Strawberries are ripe and ready for harvest. Blueberries will be ready in the days to come and raspberries in the weeks to follow.

All the rain we’ve been having has been very helpful in terms of watering, and giving us nice lush gardens, but coupled with the hot, humid weather it also promotes more pests and diseases in the garden. Not to worry, a simple 10 to 15 minutes of maintenance per day will help avoid any future problems.

While harvesting and weeding to make sure each plant has enough space around it to grow, check for any pests and remove them. Also remove any diseased or damaged leaves and throw them in the garbage.

The pests we’ve been seeing in your gardens and ours are slugs hiding on and under lower leaves of lettuces. Green cabbage moth caterpillars on cabbage and broccoli, potato beetles on eggplants, and leaf miners on the swiss chard. Also keep a close eye on cucumbers and zucchini as soon as the flowers start opening for cucumber beetles and remove and destroy as soon as they show up.

Once you remove the damaged leaves, and adult insects, check the underside of healthy leaves and wipe off any eggs with a soapy cloth.

The only disease we’ve run across is powdery mildew. If you see any, remove affected leaves right away, and spray the rest of the plant with a 10% baking soda solution every couple of days to prevent further spreading. Always wash your hands and tools before and after maintenance.

Keeping your garden clean and well harvested plus daily checks for pests and diseases will keep your garden happy, healthy and productive all season long and eliminate any need for insecticides.

Getting into edible flowers, herbs, garlic greens

First some important notes: If you have any radishes left, they definitely need to come out. If they are in the garden for too long, they get tough and very spicy! And, if you have any heads of lettuce that are sharing space with peppers or eggplants, they need to come out too. If your eggplants or peppers are crowded by other plants, they will not grow well and will not produce very many fruits. Please continue to wipe leaf miner eggs off of your swiss chard, and remove any leaves damaged by larvae.

The slugs seem to be starting, I’ve seen some little ones in my garden, so start hunting! Search and destroy. You can also bury a small yoghurt container or beer can filled with beer in the garden in a couple of spots as a beer trap. The trick with slugs – like everything in the garden – is to act early and often so that they don’t get out of control.

Perhaps most importantly: Keep on harvesting. Take advantage of the vegetables you have while they are in season. Harvest and weed enough to give each plant the space it needs to grow.

Adding flowers to your salads or desserts, not only adds a splash of colour and beauty to your dish but they are very delicious as well. In addition to harvesting the large outer leaves off of all of your lettuces, kale and swiss chard, you can harvest your edible flowers and herbs and add them to your salads. All the flowers we plant are edible. You can pull apart the larger flowers like the zinnia, chive and viola and sprinkle the petals on the salad. I like to leave the baby blue eyes, nasturtium and small marigolds whole for visual appeal. If you have yellow mizuna or roquette flowers add those in as well.  I like to add dill, parsley and oregano to salads in addition to the flowers with some olive oil, salt and pepper to make those leafy greens, flowers and herbs sing.

Garlic scapes are ready to harvest. It is important to remove them all from the garlic plant so that the plant’s energy goes into producing bulbs instead of flowers. The scape is the curled end above the top leaves, see photo below. Simply snip off. You can chop it up to add to any dish, or blend all of them together to add to a pesto. We have onion fly larva eating our garlic scapes and leaves. If you see a small yellowish larva on your plants, search and destroy.

In the driving rain over this past week, your tomato plants may have been knocked over and require some extra support. If you do not have peas, you can attach your tomatoes to the trellis by wrapping the growing end around the trellis strings. See my video for more info. If you do have peas, you can provide a stake for tomato plants for support if needed, until your peas finish fruiting. Once you have peas, harvest them early and often for maximum harvest. Here is a video from last year to see how to handle trellised snow peas.

Phew! That was pretty long. Thanks for reading! I’ll try to be more concise next time.

Harvesting your leafy greens

What to do with this wacky weather? The early hot weather of the last weeks has been hard on those of your vegetables that most prefer the cooler weather. This has encouraged the Asian greens (bok choy and mizuna) especially to bolt to seed. All is not lost! Those lovely yellow flowers are a delicious topper to any mixed green salad. Instead of harvesting your bok choy as a bulb, you can simply snip off as many sections of leaves as you need and leave the rest of the plant to keep on growing.

For those clients with us from last year, your summer planting is coming up soon. It feels early because of the sudden drop in temperatures, but rest assured that it is the right time for your tomatoes, peppers and eggplants to start going in the garden. We will contact you about three days before coming. Please harvest your spinach, radish and bok choy to make space for your summer veg.

You can harvest your leafy greens as soon as the outer leaves are big enough for your taste. I suggest removing a couple of large outer leaves per plant, and letting the smaller inner leaves keep on growing for a continual harvest. Simply add a nice olive oil, your favourite vinegar and some salt and pepper for a lovely mixed green salad. For more details, take a look at my video.

The low, dark green leaved plant many of you have in your garden is Tatsoi. It is also an Asian green, in the same family as bok choy. You can harvest the outer leaves of this plant as well. If you enjoy the more bitter taste you can eat it raw, but it is most often steamed with butter, or as an addition to a stir fry.

How this crazy weather affects our planting plans

First we lost a week or so to a super tenacious winter, then we were into summer weather mere days after the snow melt. It is challenging for the cool weather loving seedlings to adjust to the dramatic temperatures. If you lost some seedlings from your spring planting, come into the garden centre and we’ll be happy to replace them free of charge.

Since it looks like the hot weather is pretty much here to stay, we are no longer going to plant spinach or bok choy, and will replace them with more heat-tolerant lettuces that will do much better in your gardens. We have one last week for spring garden installations, then we’ll be putting in summer crops.

Make sure to keep your garden well watered and weeded. It’s easier to pull out the weeds while they’re small. Clearing out large weeds is much more work! On days where we get a good rain, no need to water – but make sure to check that your garden soil is moist on hot, sunny days. The more water you garden gets, the more veggies you will get out of it in the end.

Some of you may already have radishes, beets and carrots sprouting in your garden. Make sure to remove the extra plants. Thinning requires that you make sure to provide each plant with exactly the amount of room necessary to grow to maturity. For radishes and carrots that’s 2 inches (or 4 rows of 4 plants in each square foot, for beets 3 inches (or 3 rows of 3 plants per square foot). This step is absolutely necessary for these root vegetables to grow. If they are too close together they will not form a nice root.

We’re growing too! We are most happy to introduce Nicola Manning, the newest member of our team. Born Friday, May 8th.

Time to start watering the garden

It is so incredible how as soon as the first warm rays of sunshine arrive, the buds burst open. It makes walking down the street a true pleasure after our long and hard winter!

You can remove and store your floating row covers to let the hot sun into the garden.

Since last week’s rains are behind us, it is important to start watering your gardens. Seeds planted need to stay moist in order to germinate, and those tender seedlings need water to grow. It is important to water deeply, so that the plant roots follow the water deep into the garden soil. A light watering will encourage the plant roots to grow upwards towards the surface of the garden and make the plants more vulnerable to drying out.

Check on your garden everyday. Touch the soil. The surface will dry out, but it should be humid 1cm (1/2″) under the soil at all times. This is especially important while seedlings are young, and seeds are germinating.

If possible it is best to water in the morning, as watering in the evening encourages slugs. If regular watering is a problem, we can install a simple irrigation system on a time for you. Setting up a timer and a sprinkler or drip hose is also an option. Set your timer from 4am – 5am daily.

Time to get planting

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After a long, cold winter spring is finally officially upon us. Our seeds, seedlings and soil are all ready to go and our trucks will be on the road replanting your spring gardens over the next two weeks. We will be in touch at least 3 days beforehand to let you know exactly when we are coming.

Please remove the plastic that was protecting your garden all winter to set the garlic free. You can just take the plastic off the garlic and keep it on the rest of the garden to keep weed seeds out before we get there.

If you are getting a brand new garden with Urban Seedling garden, we will be starting to build around May 1st. Again we will be in touch at least 3 days before to let you know when we are coming.

If you are planting your vegetable garden yourself, you can now come to our Garden Centre 7 days per week. 8 – 6pm Monday to Friday, or 10 – 5pm on the weekend. The best way to find us is to search for “Urban Seedling” in Google Maps as our entrance is on rue Angers.

I can’t wait to see those buds burst on the trees. My eyes are missing the green!

Keep opening my newsletters for step-by-step instructions on how to maintain you Urban Seedling garden throughout the year. I’ll do my best to send along as many pictures and videos and be with you every step of the way.

Happy Gardening!
Tereska