Our first veggies are up! 25 days after you plant your radish they are ready to pick. It is always better to pick your vegetables when they are at their best. Your radishes will get tough and spicy in the heat.
The leafy greens are best picked now as well. Roquette, lettuce, bok choy, tatsoi and rapini are starting to bolt to seed. Best to harvest them while they are great as well. You can pick the flowers and eat them as well! Go into the garden with your salad bowl and take a couple of leaves from each type of plant for a fantastic mixed greens salad. The smaller inner leaves will continue to grow for a continual harvest. Take a look at my video for more details.
Still not a lot of rain! Make sure to keep on watering. Edibles are high performance plants that need a lot of sun and a lot of water to do well. If your seeds are not germinating or your plants are still small it is probably due to not enough water.
Slugs are starting to come out. At this time of year they are still small. It is important to get them out of the garden right away. They grow quickly and multiply! Use beer traps and hand picking to get out ahead of the population explosion. Watering in the morning instead of at night can greatly reduce slug populations as it makes it harder for them to get around at dusk on the dry soil surface.
The leaf miners are back. They cause the burn-like damage on Swiss chard and beet greens. You can save your plants by removing any damaged leaves right away, and inspecting the underside of healthy leaves and remove any eggs. Here’s a video with more details.
The Trichogramma and Nematodes are in! If you need protection from cabbage moth or Japanese Beetle, order now. We are also taking orders for Lacewing to control aphids, Cucumeris to control thrips and the almighty Mantis: Garden Predator. Reply to this email to reserve your beneficial insects.
Over the next few weeks, add heat-loving summer vegetables to your garden. We suggest removing one leafy-green per square foot to replace with a pepper or an eggplant (video). You will have to clear out the rest of the square soon to give your summer plants room to grow, but for now they can share to give you a little more spring harvest.