Linda Gilkeson

With what has been relatively warm weather for this time of year, rampages of climbing cutworms and other caterpillars continue. Many people are reporting usually large numbers of caterpillars chewing up their leafy greens and other vegetables. Photos sent to me have been mostly of the usual suspect that I mention often: The Large Yellow Underwing Moth, whose larvae are those extremely hardy climbing cutworms that feed all winter. See: http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/leaf_chewers.html#25 Nighttime inspections by flashlight a couple of hours after dark to pick off the caterpillars are quite effective as the caterpillars are easy to see feeding on leaves. They are most active on warmer evenings (9-10oC/48-50oF), but do also feed at lower temperatures. The first night you hunt for them you will likely find most of them, but keep checking for a few more nights to pick off the last few. Cutworms I have been finding range in size from very small to larger ones that look more than h…

As the growing season winds down, if you have tomatoes still on the vine outdoors, pick the unblemished ones to continue ripening indoors. Any fruit that has even slightly started to turn from green to slightly yellowish-green will continue to ripen fully off the vine. Days now are so short, cool and wet that nothing much is going to ripen now unless it is in a greenhouse. Peppers that have started to turn from green toward their ripe colour (red, yellow, purple) will also ripen indoors off the plant. Winter squash and pumpkins still on the vine can stay there until there is risk of frost in your garden. By now they are growing very slowly and if they aren’t already nearly mature, they aren’t likely to get much further. Keep checking the stems to determine maturity and havest when the stem has become hard enough that you can’t make a mark on it with a fingernail. These late fruit should still be cured after harvest by holding them somewhere as warm as possible for a few week…

It is odd to be heading into September with everything looking so green due to the heavy rains in August. That caused some splitting of soft fruit, such as plums and figs, even some vegetables (one of my cabbages virtually exploded), but it also provided relief from summer watering restrictions. Tasks this month focus on getting the most out of the last weeks of the growing season: check that carrots and other root crops, hardy greens, etc. are well thinned so growth isn’t slowed by crowding; boost the fall production of zucchini and other summer squash with a feeding of liquid fertilizer (e.g., fish fertilizer, compost or manure soaked in water), which also helps plants outgrow powdery mildew. Other tasks: Tomatoes: Garden tomatoes (and peppers) have been slow to ripen with the cold weather last month and many people are feeling deprived of their favorite crop. Only fruit already set on outdoor plants now will have time to ripen (tomatoes in greenhouses have longer dependin…

The date to sow spinach in my garden is approaching fast: August 12 just seems to work out best so that’s become Spinach Day at my house. It is late enough in the season that the rapidly shortening days prevent spinach from flowering despite any hot weather the seedlings may experience. Spinach sown at this time of year will be ready for fall and winter harvests, and, even if beaten up by a cold winter, usually comes back from the roots with a big crop in March and April. You can also sow arugula and hardy varieties of winter lettuce over the next week or two since they grow quickly. Lettuce sown at the end of August, however, would be best grown in cold frames, tunnels or unheated greenhouses to give them a bit longer growing season. Sow corn salad (mâché) for winter salads can be sown directly in the garden by the end of August. I scatter the seeds on the soil surface under squash, tomato, pepper plants where they wait until it is cool enough to germinate. By the time the war…

For the rest of July and through August, your mission is to fill up any spaces in your garden with hardy vegetables for harvest from late fall through winter. With garlic and onions grown from sets maturing this month, that leaves some larger spaces for winter crops. Early peas, lettuce, radishes and other salad greens are likely finished by now, leaving more space to plant winter crops. Have a look at everything growing in your garden now to decide what to ‘edit’: are there plants that are doing poorly? that no one in the house likes? that are producing too much to use? For example, this week I removed a patch of lettuce that will never get eaten, the last radishes that were getting too woody and what I realized was going to be 2 too many zucchini plants. From now until early August, sow leafy greens from seed (arugula, winter lettuce, mizuna, collars, kale, leaf mustards and mustard spinach/Komatsuna, Bok choi and other Chinese cabbage, spinach, broccoli raab). You can als…

We are well into summer with milestones for sowing seeds for winter harvest crops coming up quickly: It’s nearly that day again, when it is time to celebrate July 1 (or 4th of July for our US friends) by sowing a big bed of carrots to feed you from fall through spring. My Canada Day celebrations always include getting those carrot seeds sown, well-watered and covered securely with insect netting against carrot rust fly. Some years, scorching hot weather in the first weeks of July can make the soil too warm for carrot seeds to germinate if the bed isn’t well shaded. Carrots take longer than most vegetable seeds to germinate and must be kept cool and moist the entire time so it can be hard to get a good stand of carrots from a summer sowing. This year, the coastal weather forecast is for cool to moderate temperatures for the first part of the week so it will be easier to keep the seeds cool, but if you live inland in a warmer climate or if the coastal weather gets warmer over …

The garlic is alright! Some people have been surprised by how big their garlic plants are and some have been concerned because their hardneck garlic sent up scapes (flower stalks) so early. Keep in mind that it was a warmer than average winter—from the garlic’s point of view. Buried in the soil, the bulbs wouldn’t have experienced that spell of extreme cold in January so with a generally warmer winter, plants likely have grown a bigger than usual root system. While the cool weather we have had recently is making our melon and cucumber plants wobble, it has been perfect for garlic growth. For most garlic, it may mean an earlier harvest this year, which is all to the good as it frees up space for planting fall and winter crops. What to plant now: From now to the end of June is the time to sow seeds of overwintering broccoli and cauliflower. These are biennial varieties that form their heads after they experience the cold chill of winter. These varieties are getting hard to fin…

With the cool, wet weather recently, the cabbage/mustard family plants, peas and leafy greens are thriving. I still haven’t planted out my melons or some cucumber seedlings (the ones I planted out a couple of week ago are barely hanging in there). Sweet basil is another fragile crop that can’t handle cool weather so hold off on planting them out if you can. If basil, cucumbers or melons were set out earlier and are now turning yellow and failing, there is still time to harvest a good crop if you have to start over with new plants or from seed (sow now, indoors). For most gardens in the region, the soil is probably too cool to plant corn or even bean seeds directly in the garden so continue to start seeds indoors so they can germinate in warm conditions. Most squash and tomatoes outdoors should get through this cool weather OK as they are the most robust of the warmth loving crops, but if tomato leaves are looking purplish colour or squash have yellowing lower leaves, those are …

The cold nights over the last month certainly slowed down the arrival of planting weather, but it is time to get onion sets, shallots, onion and leek seedlings into the garden if you haven’t already done so. To grow good-sized onions, they need to be planted as early as possible to have time to develop a good root system before the long days/short nights in June stimulate the plants to make bulbs. If planted too late (after mid-May) onions often don’t make bulbs at all. Which reminds me, if you want to try growing your own onion sets, sow seeds of a good storage variety the first week of May, directly in the garden. Plant densely (3-5 seeds per square inch) and don’t amend the soil with compost or fertilizer before planting because you want to these onions to stay as small as possible. As long as they are sown before mid-May they produce tiny bulbs that will be cured and stored same way as onions for eating. You should be able to harvest over a hund…

With the season coming along early this year, everyone wants to get gardening. While sandy and well-drained soil can be handled sooner than clay soils, after all the recent rain all soil is still much too wet to be dug or handled. So for now, stick to weeding, cleaning up debris and raking mulch back to allow the soil to warm up on the first beds you intend to plant; some seeds can be sown on the soil surface (see below). Weeding: Weeds to watch for include the winter annuals, such as that small mustard family plant, hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta). They have been germinating since mid-winter and are well on their way to making seeds that pop from the tiny seed pods all over the garden (the leaves make a tasty peppery addition to a salad). It is especially important to remove weeds, especially grasses, from vegetable beds to avoid attracting wireworm adults (called click beetles) to lay their eggs in the garden. The beetles lay eggs on plants, preferring grasses, in ea…