Summer Arrives At My Garden Shire

I’m almost done planting and things have calmed down here in the Shire. The paths and watering hoses are all laid in and the newborn plants are swaddled in straw mulch. What a transformation!

Some hot weather has arrived too triggering leaf minors in my chard and flea beetles on the kale, mustard greens and tomatoes. At least I finally know what do do about them. I’ve been picking out any chard leaves that show active leaf minor, or even the brown little spots that seem to be part of their life cycle. I'm hoping the current generation will eventually become exhausted and they will stop bothering me.

The best way to fight flea beetles is to never give them a chance. I did this with the cabbage and cauliflower, which have been growing in a tube tunnel since they were tender seedlings. I was reluctant to put the kale and mustard greens under a tube tunnel, but when the flea beetles showed up, I had to do it. I’m taking a shortcut on the tomatoes and spaying them with Sevin (active ingredient Zeta-Cypermethrin).

My climbing vines including squash, cucumbers and melons, along with my green and yellow zucchini all got a dose of a copper fungicide to ward off the powdery mildew, which devastated my garden last year.

I’m settling into a new gardening rhythm that feels pretty good: up at 5:00am with coffee and soon into the garden, yoga and meditation around 9:00am followed by an hour in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber , and finally a huge fresh garden salad for lunch….