How to judge your vegetables readiness

Back to school is in the air, and it feels like summer is drawing to a close. I even saw my first red maple leaves yesterday!

Your garden, still has at least another 2 months of good growing left in it! As long as you keep up with the watering and weeding, you should get a lovely fall harvest of all your summer and fall vegetables.

Tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are ripening. Tomatoes especially need nice consistent watering to succeed. If your tomatoes are cracked, or mealy it means that you haven’t been watering enough, or you’ve left them on the vine too long. How do you know when your tomatoes are ready? The colour is a good indication, but more important is the touch. Gently squeeze the tomato and if it is not rock hard, it is ready to eat.

There is no such thing as a green pepper! All green peppers are simply red, orange or yellow peppers that haven’t ripened yet. That goes for the hot peppers too. Even jalapeños will turn red. You can certainly pick them green, or let them ripen fully for a sweeter (or hotter) taste.

You can tell that eggplants are ripe by gently squeezing for softness. The more you harvest, the more fruit you can expect from your plants. Eggplants can be picked at a variety of sizes. You should pick them before they start to go from shiny to mat.

For cucumber, beans and zucchini, the smaller you pick the fruit, the tastier it is, and the more you pick the more you get. Good eating!

If your plants are still small and spindly, it is most likely one of two problems. Not enough sun, or not enough water. Check if your garden has at least 6 hours of sun per day. If not, take a look around your yard for where we could move your garden to for next year. If your garden is already in a sunny spot, small spindly plants indicates that you are not watering enough, especially on hot sunny days. Consider a simple irrigation system on a timer to ensure that your garden is getting deep, consistent watering.

Our current issue is with powdery mildew, and other leaf bacteria and fungus. Be sure to remove any diseased or damaged leaves from the garden. Your best defence against these types of invasions is to keep your garden free of debris, and to stop the spread by removing affected plant parts. A baking soda spray (1 tablespoon Baking soda, 1 teaspoon oil, 1/2 teaspoon dish soap in a gallon of water) works wonders to protect the plants.

Please be sure not to make a baking soda solution that is too potent. A strong solution can burn leaves.

Please let me know if you have any gardening questions.

 

Replants are coming. Harvest, harvest, harvest

If you had an Urban Seedling garden last year, chances are that you have garlic in your garden. It is usually planted in the front right two squares, and it is ready to harvest! You can start using it right away fresh, but to get something that you can store in your pantry, you need to cure it. 

Pull out all the garlic by the stems and wash off the excess soil. Leave the garlic out in the sun for about 2 weeks until the neck is dry. Cut off the stalks and store in a dark, cool, dry place (like the pantry)

It’s also time to get down to harvesting carrots, beets, onions. If you have a replant plan with us, we will be coming to your house between the 18th of August and the 6th of September to replant lettuces, spinach, radishes, and some bok choy for a fall harvest. Generally speaking, you will be harvesting everything from the front row of your 10′ x 3′ garden bed.

I will email you at least 3 days before we come to replant so that you can harvest at your leisure. The tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, beans and zucchini will stay in your garden until the end of the season (end of October).

For those of you who are planting yourselves, we have seeds and seedlings available for purchase in our greenhouse as of August 16th. We are open Monday to Friday 10 – 4pm If evenings or weekends work better for you, please call ahead to make an appointment.

Lovely Balsamic Green Bean Garden Salad recipe 

All that waiting has paid off, root veg at the ready

It is high time to start harvesting your beets, carrots and onions. Harvest them as you need them, and remember that beet greens are absolutely delicious in a sauté, in a quiche, or raw in a salad. Onions are delicious raw as well as caramelized or sautéed, don’t forget to include the onion greens!

Carrot greens can be eaten too. They have a taste reminiscent of parsley and can be eaten raw in salads, sautéd with garlic, olive oil along with your beet tops, kale and Swiss chard. You can also or cook carrot greens into a soup or a stock now that the weather seems to be cooling off.

Beans have also appeared. They can hide under those big green leaves, so you may have to investigate a bit to find them. Like cucumbers, pick them early and often for best results. The young and tender ones are the tastiest. You can certainly steam or boil them for one or two minutes, but I like beans from the garden best chopped raw in a salad with feta or crumbly goat cheese.

Delicious beet green salad 

Tomatoes are running later than usual this year. You should have plenty of green tomatoes that will be ripening up very soon if they haven’t already. Please don’t forget to water, water, water the success of large plants like tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchinis depends on it. Remove any branches that you can not fit on to the trellis. Please also remove all the snow pea vines you may have left over.

A big problem at this time of year is powdery mildew on cucumbers, melons, zucchini and squash. It is a fungus recognizable as white polka dots on the upper surface of leaves. Once the leaf is affected, it is not possible to be rid of the fungus. The only thing you can do is remove affected leaves as soon as possible. You can spray the plant with a baking soda mixture every couple of days to prevent the spread.

Baking soda mixture
2 tbsp Baking soda
3 drops liquid soap
1 tsp olive oil

How to keep your garden healthy with out chemicals

Before we get down to it, some reminders for general garden maintenance.

First, this hot and sunny weather means you absolutely need to water a LOT.If you get lots of sun, but your plants are still small and dinky, it probably means they are not getting enough water. Remember to water in the morning, or evening but not in the middle of the day, since the water will evaporate instead of penetrating deep into the garden soil.

Second, harvest early and often, early and often. Cucumbers are best at around 6 inches (15cm). If you still have peas, they are only tasty when young and tender, harvesting large kale and swiss chard leaves makes more space for sun and air circulation for your other plants. You can start harvesting larger onions and beets. Carrots might be ready soon as well. Remember that beet greens are delicious in salads and sautés.

The most important thing for a healthy garden is to make sure that your plants are in good health. Healthy plants are very resistant to pest and diseased. Lots of water, nutrient-rich soil and proper weeding along with beneficial insects will do most of the pest and disease control for you.

Down to it:
Japanese beetles. An invasive species without a lot of options and no natural predators. Fortunately they are slow and easily trapped by shaking the affected plants over a bucket of soapy water. To be effective, shake daily. [Top left pic below]

Leafminer. A small fly that lays eggs on the underside of leaves (especially beets and chard). The larvae burrow into the leaves creating brown filmy damaged patches on the leaves. Put yellow sticky traps around affected plants to trap adult flies. Remove damaged leaves as soon as they appear. [Top right pic below]

Aphids. Groups of small soft bodied insects, can be black, white, red, brown or yellow. Remove affected plant or plant part and put in the garbage. If the infestation is wide spread spray with a soap spray {2 tbsp Murphy’s Oil Soap and 1/2 cup rubbing alcohol in one litre of water}. If the infestation is not wide spread spray the aphids with a strong jet of water to knock them off the plant. [Middle left pic]

Slug and snails. Slimy inch long squishy creatures that eat ragged holes in the leaves of leafy greens. On kale and swiss chard damage looks like burns. Trap with yeast or beer traps. Dig a small cup into the garden and add beer. Refresh beer and remove carcasses frequently Most effective control is hand picking daily at dusk. [Middle right pic]

Cucumber beetle. Ladybug-sized black and yellow striped beetle hanging in or around the yellow flowers of cucumbers, squash or melon plants. They are slow as well, and are effectively controlled by hand picking, but it is important to do it daily. Yellow sticky traps tucked into the affected plants are a good way to handle more difficult infestations.

Powdery Mildew. A fungus usually on leaves of cucumbers and zucchini plants. These white spots on plant leaves spread quickly if left unchecked. The best control is to remove affected leaves right away. You can also prevent powdery mildew, or prevent it from spreading by spraying leaves every few days with a Baking soda solution {1 tsp baking soda to 1 litre of water with a few drops of dish soap (Sunlight is best) in a spray bottle}. This changes the pH of the surface of the leaves making it impossible for the powdery mildew to establish itself.

Plus a primer on the leaf miner

The Cucurbitaceae family, generally vines with big yellow flowers including cucumbers, squash, zucchini, melon, set their male flowers first to attract pollinators to the plant. Once the plant matures, it will produce female flowers – identifiable by a miniature fruit between the flower and the vine.

If the female flowers appear, but then dry up and fall off, it means that you do not have enough insect activity and will have to pollinate by hand.

It seems like a lot of the Swiss chard and beet leaf damage is due to leaf miners. (Boo) Leaf miners are small hunched-back flies that lay eggs on the underside of leaves. The larva then tunnel inside the leaf creating the leaf damage. Control is simply removing damaged leaves, and watering well to help the plant out grow the damage. Yellow sticky traps can help to to trap adult insects.

Keep harvesting Kale, Swiss chard, beet leaves and snow peas. If the peas are not enjoyable anymore, because they are fat and tough – please remove the vines to make room for the tomatoes, and attach tomatoes to the trellis by wrapping the growing end around the net.

If your beet roots have gotten to a nice size you can start harvesting them as you need them. My favourite way to use beets fresh from the garden, is to grate them raw into a salad. Delicious! Onions and carrots will be ready soon too. We will be back to replant around the last 2 weeks of August, so you have about a month left to harvest all the beets, onions, garlic and carrots.

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

Keep your garden healthy by keeping it orderly

Peas peas peas! Now is the best time to be harvesting your snow peas. The peas are tender and delicious, and the more you pick the more harvest you will get. It is hot hot HOT out there, so the vines will soon be stressed and dying and we will be removing them to make room on the trellis for the tomatoes.

It is important to take a close look at your tomato plants and remove any extra branches and suckers. Take a look at my video for instruction. If your peppers and eggplants are not doing well, it is probably because they are being shaded and crowded by your overgrown tomato plants or leafy greens. You can start attaching tomato plants to the trellis with string, or looping them around the trellis netting if you have room between the snow peas. I will ask you to remove the snow peas soon to make more room for the tomatoes.

It has come to my attention that some of you still have flowering spinach in your gardens. It is time to pull out spinach, and heads of lettuce to make space for the other summer vegetables in your garden. You can still have lots of leafy greens, just start harvesting larger outer leaves from your beets. Keep harvesting from your kale and Swiss chard plants.

Take a close look at your cucumber plants. Keep an eye out for signs of cucumber beetle eggs or larvae (see photos below). It is important to kill ANY cucumber beetles in your garden as they will reproduce very quickly and the disease they carry (bacterial wilt) will kill your cucumber, zucchini or squash plants.

Tips on vegetables playing nice in your garden

Now that we have some nice hot weather, make sure to water lots. Plants that don’t get enough deep watering stay small.
 
The garlic scapes are out and ready to harvest. They are elegant, curly stalks with a flower on the end. It is important to remove the entire scape before the flower opens to direct energy into forming a nice big garlic head. Scapes are delicious to eat, in a sauté, as part of a pesto, or finely chopped in any garlicky sauce.
 
Snow peas are flowering, if not ready to harvest soon. Let the pods reach your desired size, 3 or so inches. Harvest early and often while the pea is still young. This is when they are at their best and the more you harvest, the larger the yield. Make sure to guide them onto the trellis if they stray – same thing goes for the cucumbers.

Green arrow peas are shelling peas, which take longer to mature. For those, wait until the pod fills out, and then break open to expose the peas inside.
 
Make sure to keep slug hunting and remove slug damaged leaves. Keep on top of harvesting your leafy greens to make room for the other plants to grow in your garden.
 
Take a look at my video for more details.
 
Your broccoli is probably heading up. Let them keep growing until they reach a desirable size. Keep an eye daily because the broccoli heads are actually flowers and if you leave them too long, they will open into yellow flowers. Cut the head with a sharp knife, and let the rest of the plant keep growing. In a couple of weeks you can harvest 2 smaller side heads. In the meantime you can add the large outer leaves to salads, stir-fries or sautés.
 
If you have mushroom logs, keep them watered, and in a shady spot. Once the oyster mushrooms sprout, keep them watered as well.
 
If you have a brand new asparagus patch, you should be seeing a couple of tiny spears appearing. The asparagus spear is actually an immature frond, like a fiddlehead to a fern leaf. Let these grow into long feathery blooms will feed you asparagus crown, and provide you with harvest next spring.
 
If you have a potato bed, the greenery should be quite tall and lush by now. You can remove the bottom 6 inches of leaves and mound up soil. This can increase yields.
 
Garlic scape pesto

Mid-June and July are the perfect time to trim bushes and trees!

June and July are the perfect months to trim back any overgrown hedges, trees or lilacs. As a valued Urban Seedling customer we will give you preferential treatment so you can have your hedges and lilacs trimmed at an optimal time of the year to get your yard looking its best for pool parties and backyard BBQ’s!

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.

Giving tomatoes, peppers, eggplants & co. what they need.

Now that your summer veggies are in the garden you need to care for them properly so they grow. Each plant in your garden needs sun, space, water and nutrients. We took care of the nutrients, adding worm castings and natural fertilizers to your whole garden.

To keep as many greens as possible in your garden, we only pulled a portion of the spring plants. In order for your plants to live and grow well together all the new plants need to have a clear area around them so that they can get enough sun and space.

To give your new plants enough sun, you need to harvest, harvest, harvest all the time. Pull out the rest of your radishes as soon as possible – they wont get any bigger. Keep cutting the larger kale and chard leaves so they don’t cast shade on the rest of your garden. Remove entire spinach and oak leaf lettuce plants as you need them.

The clear space around your new summer plants is crucial. If they are too crowded they wont grow. The tomatoes are planted in front of the snow peas while they are small. As the tomatoes get bigger, the snow peas will mature. I will eventually ask you to pull out the snow peas to attach the tomatoes to the trellis around mid-July.

Keep an eye out for slugs. I’ve found a couple of huge ones on my oak leaf lettuce. My Swiss chard and spinach are starting to show slug damage as well. It looks like paler patches on the leaves. You can just cut these parts off and eat the undamaged areas.

What to do with all those greens you are harvesting?
Spinach and garlic green soup
Kale chips, a great snack!
Mango radish salad
and for the kids – Ninja Turtle smoothies

Eat those large outer leaves every day

Now that your spring garden is in full swing, take advantage of your spring vegetables while they are at their best. Get out there every day with your salad bowl and harvest the large outer leaves from each plant. You should be able to see some space between each plant. This will also help keep the slug population down.

If you already have peppers and eggplants in your garden, PLEASE make sure to give those plants their space. If the spinach and lettuces start to get too close to the peppers, tomatoes and eggplants they won’t grow! The best thing you can do is harvest, harvest, harvest every day. Give it away to your neighbours, friends and family! Bring it to dinner parties! Share the wealth! See harvesting tips with help from Danika.

The roquette, rapini and bok choy will surely have gone to flower if you haven’t been harvesting them religiously. The roquette – especially the Adagio – will send up a big thick furry central stalk. You should cut this off at it’s base to keep your roquette going.

You can simply cut off the top flowering sections and add them to stir fry, or salads. You can also remove the whole rapini or bok choy plant, roots and all. These will be coming out as soon as it is time for your summer planting anyway.

Unless your garden was planted very recently, your carrots and beets should have come up by now. It is important to thin them to give each seedling it’s space. Carrots need about 2″ each, beets need about 3″ each. It is best to cut the excess carrot seedlings with scissors, but the beet seedlings you can transplant if you have empty spots in the garden.

More details on thinning and cutting flowers in my video with guest host Luca

Make sure to water, water, water. If your plants are looking smallish, chances are you are not watering enough. Even though the surface of the soil will dry out, if you stick your finger in the soil, it should be humid all the time.

Here is a gorgeous kale salad recipe I like. But really, most days I just go outside with my salad bowl, pick a couple of leaves from each plant and squeeze some fresh lemon, olive oil, sea salt and cracked pepper. Yum!