Wow… this has been a fairly tough season!
- HOT May
- Cold June
- Pests Galore
- Drought
- HEAT
- Smoke
- Water Restrictions
So what now?
To our Youth Gardeners and to the community at large:
Drought and Water Restrictions:
The lack of water for some youth (and community members) has been a real challenge as their wells have dried up and now, with watering restrictions. No rain has meant regular watering and that can take a long time.
If you are still pushing through to have your garden keep growing, for the food, for the garden visit and maybe for planning to be a garden vendor, watering is still crucial. And so it fertilizing.
Whatever you can do to help keep the water in the soil is important. MULCH with some grass clippings (if there still are some), some aged wood chips or some clean straw if you can access it. Even chopping and dropping some of those weeds growing and covering your soil can help. Take some scissors or garden shears and chop it up like you’re making a weed salad and sprinkle it over. It adds nutrients and retains moisture in the soil and helps your garden look tidier.
If you have compost you can add to your crops (not high nitrogen right now), now would be a good time to top dress your garden or liquid fish fertilizers would be ideal right now as they can also help the plants through the stress of this smoky and hot period.
FYI: Stage 3 water restrictions
You CAN WATER your food producing plants. They don’t want you using an overhead sprinkler during the day (10am-7pm) but at this time of year, overhead watering is NOT ADVISED as it can encourage disease.
Hand water at the soil level as much as you can. Watering cans are your best option though it is time consuming. The nice thing is that you can control how much water per plant and can get it right at the base of the plant to keep your leaves dry. You can also add some liquid fertilizer in which your plants would likely appreciate right now. A Fish Fertilizer or Seaweed Extract can help, especially due to wildfire smoke. Google it and see what it tells you and here’s a sciency-article. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10725-022-00815-y
PESTS!
We have been seeing some tomato hornworms, cabbage moth is a nuisance and aphids start moving in as plants get stressed.
Now, I am starting to also see some early blights and some fungal diseases, like Powdery Mildew and Target Spot (Corynespora cassiicola). Sheesh… Doesn’t it still amaze you how hardy “weeds” are and how well they do without our involvement and yet these crops we want to eat, have so many issues! It really seems we need to be thinking of what we grow and perhaps even… what else we could eat (foraging!)
THE KEY TO PESTS AND DISEASE is to regularly inspect your plants and remove problems ASAP.
Look for the damage (chewed leaves, poops of various sizes, curled leaves) and then find the culprit. Cabbage worms will usually be on the underside of leaves of cabbages and broccoli and will chew holes. Hornworms can hang out on stems of tomatoes and eat the whole plant. Aphids will cling into the crevices of greens and leaves and suck the nutrients out, leaving damage.
This is why the HEALTH OF YOUR SOIL is so important. Your plants get their nutrients from the microcosm of critters in the soil. The healthier your soil, the healthier your plants and the more they are able to defend themselves through their own protective compounds. Stressed plants are like beacons to bugs who are truly just doing their jobs to decompose the weak links. Not what we want but Nature is pretty awesome and knows what its doing. PS: We are going to host 2 upcoming opportunities to learn more about soil health. Check out our Shuswap Community Teaching Garden page for details.
Disease
Remove leaves that are discoloured, spotted or with powdery mildew (white powdery coating). Put them into a GARBAGE BAG and not into your compost (unless you know the leaf is just old – usually at the bottom – and not diseased.)
Prune your plants: remove excessive leaves off your crops and try and give your plants some air flow. Keeping leaves dry is important.
Mulch around your plants to avoid the splash back of soil spores onto leaves and only water in the morning if possible and, at this time of year, only the soil.
Smoke
There’s a strange pro/con situation when it comes to smoke. This article here provides a lot of information and worth understanding.
One of the greatest challenges in understanding wildfire smoke impacts on agriculture is that smoke can create both beneficial and detrimental conditions simultaneously. The ultimate crop response depends on smoke intensity, duration, crop species, growth stage, and the prevailing weather conditions before and during exposure. Smoke may reduce heat stress and improve light distribution within the canopy, yet it can also decrease total solar radiation, alter plant water relations, and delay crop development. As a result, predicting crop responses to wildfire smoke remains difficult, and observations from one season or location may not apply universally.
https://extension.psu.edu/wildfire-smoke-growing-crops-through-the-haze
Of course, it’s also not great to be out working in the garden in the smoke so do what’s best for you and your health and the garden is second to that. This gives us a chance to be REALLY GRATEFUL to farmers as their livelihood is based on growing food and they have to be out in this every day. Hip Hip Hooray for Farmers!
Plants not producing fruit? Not ripening? Links within to learn more
Plants go into self-preservation mode when it gets too hot. Sometimes tomatoes and cukes will just drop their flowers and stop trying to create fruit to conserve energy. Tomatoes may sit there green without ripening. This is because of heat and will typically resume growth and ripening when the temperatures go back into the 20s. Patience is key. You can use shade cloth but that’s a lot of work and can be an extra expense.
Some zucchinis or cucumbers might start growing and then turn yellow and die. This is usually from improper pollination. With the smoke, a lot of pollinators may not be as active and so plants may not be as well pollinated as is needed in order to grow properly. You CAN hand pollinate (google this :) to have more success. You can also prune your plants to make sure the flowers are visible. You cannot control the smoke so these are things you can try.
If you are still trying your best and you have persevered… BIG Kudos to you and congrats for pushing through even if the garden isn’t quite what you had expected or planned. Really and truly, gardening is a journey and not a destination and you will learn from every season. This is why Spring continues to be my favourite — it’s like a do-over every season. The key is to keep learning from it as growing our own food is incredibly worthwhile and more and more quite necessary.
Shuswap Food Action will continue to be a support to you with the Shuswap Community Teaching Garden as a place for hands-on learning as well as classes. Sunday Sessions for Self Sufficiency will be back again this Winter for gardening/food production classes and if you are interested in growing your own food but don’t have a space, you can put your name onto our wait list for the John McLeod Community Garden. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to be kept up-to-date!
