More bug identification & spicy pesticide

Another site for bug identification: check out Bug Guide, for "identification, images, & information for insects, spiders & their kin for the United States & Canada".

And a fragrant way to deal with the evil ones: a nice little piece from the National Geographic tells us that the oils from common herbs such as thyme, rosemary and mint can work as pesticides if sprayed on plants.

More harvest

This is what I picked the other day and I was reflecting on what a revelation it is to know the origins of what's in my basket.



It includes Kate's celery, my carrots and fennel and onion and yukon gold potatoes, Tom's tomatoes, Brian's scarlet runner beans, Carolyn Herriot's physalis, a volunteer red norland potato (from a sprouting spud I bought at Michell's a couple of years ago), Alexis's overhanging plums, and Steve's tomatillo.

The beans and celery were seeds from our urban farmer group's seed swap; tomatoes and tomatillos and physalis were seedlings I was given. The tomatoes (Costoluto Fiorentino) are actually grown from seed saved from tomatoes I grew last year from seedlings. The physalis never achieved much last year so I brought it indoors in its pot, where it survived and grew leggy and has been an enthusiastic producer - still in a pot - all summer.

Am in awe of the scarlet runners, which I think are fantastic - tender and prolific, but next year I will anticipate properly their enormous sprawl. I know how Jack felt with his beanstalk.

These two pictures show the haul from my three different bean varieties, including some Tendergreen seeds I bought in Saskatchewan last year and forgot to plant till this year; I've been delighted by the leopard-spot appearance of some of them.

Tomato season and its perils

I have been pleased and proud of the tomato crop which I grew this year from seed saved from one heirloom tomato plant I grew from one of Tom's heirloom starts last year. They seem to be doing well despite mystery leaf curl in the potted ones. Those in the ground are looking lush and healthy. But it's started raining now, and I am living in fear of blight.



The farmers at Haliburton Farm no longer grow their tomatoes outside, because their crops were devastated by blight a couple of years ago. This terrific article about blight by farmer-chef Dan Barber explains why blight is on the rise.



Home gardening, the article says, is one cause of the spread, because novice gardeners will go to their usual shopping haunts - the article names major retailers Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart - in search of plant starts, only these stores are importing plants from thousands of miles away, and some of these carry the infections with them. (Tomato blight is spread through airborne spores from infected plants and soil that get delivered in rainfall; it can affect all the nightshade family which includes your potatoes, eggplants and peppers; and spores can travel up to 20 km on the wind.)



Ways of reducing your plants' vulnerability include starting your plants from seed, or getting them from growers who raise them locally. Stay away from the likes of Wal-Mart which ships them in from parts unknown. Try to water the plants without wetting their leaves, particularly when the weather is damp and leaves won't have a chance to dry quickly. Under no circumstances plant tomatoes or potatoes in the same soil where you've had afflictions. And raise them in a greenhouse if you can.



Taking care is not just for your own satisfaction; buying infected plants can have repercussions to you and to people growing - some of them perhaps very seriously - around you. Barber nails the problem: "As we begin to grow more of our own food, we need to reacquaint ourselves with plant pathology and understand that what we grow, and how we grow it, affects everyone else."

Summer harvest

Returned from a few days away and picked this lovely basket yesterday morning. I am definitely sold on scarlet runner beans - beautiful, prolific and delicious. Also featured are tendergreen beans, coco beans, beets, radishes, broccoli and yellow transparent apples.

Yet to ripen are a few acorn squash, a few improbably small cobs of corn, various tomatoes, tomatillos, wonder berries, some peppers; purple sprouting broccoli, leeks and kale lining up for winter harvest.

Also ready to pick now: lots of random onions, more beets, carrots, fingerling potatoes, physalis, fennel, kale and chard. The plants that probably won't produce this year (though I live in hope) are artichoke and eggplant. Not a huge surprise since the garden area is a bit short on sun exposure.

Apple pollination, management & pruning

When I bought my house, I inherited a yellow transparent apple tree which had been pruned and tended over the years, for which I am extremely grateful, since it's pretty old and could easily have become unmanageable if past owners had neglected it.

I've maintained it as best I could - and despite the ministrations of many caterpillars, the appetites of the birds



and the cack-handed interventions of a tenant who lopped off all those unsightly fruit-bearing branches while I was in Italy, it has flourished and fruited reliably.



Every spring I climb up into the tree to nab the water shoots, and when I can organize myself I give it some dormant spray in the spring as well, but that's about all I do.

Apple Tree Care
Things I've learned this year about helping it further include:

understanding pollination - because most apple trees must be pollinated with another variety (or must they..?) I guess I owe the fruiting health of mine to that of the neighbours' trees; not sure of the varieties but there must be something compatible nearby. My mason bee boxes have provided me with some good little vehicles for neighbourhood pollination.

grafting - my brother's experiments in grafting have given him some interesting variation, and I suppose makes a tree self-pollinating.
don't mess with nature - fruit trees need to pay attention to the season, so no pruning or fertilizing in the late summer or fall, as these will cause it to keep growing instead of hardening-off to protect itself from cold weather.
regular watering - fruit trees need an inch of water a week, same as the grass, and do better with one weekly deep watering than frequent sprinkling.
root space - grass and fruit trees are not, despite human interventions, good bedfellows, since grass wants to crowd everything else out. A dense root structure in your grass means less water gets through for the tree, so you should have an ungrassed region around the tree's base to let water through. Not sure how to approach this since the tree is mature now and its roots must have pretty wide reach. Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to mark out a big circle under the canopy, bring in some chickens to bare and fertilize the soil, and go from there with the mulching, planting something low-growing, shade-loving and food-producing that will let the water through. Now I just need to borrow some chickens...
feeding - like all plants the tree needs nourishment, though is more resilient than most garden plants. You can apply perhaps some form of (non chemical!) fertilizer in the spring (but not later). Organic mulches and compost are recommended. Same problem as watering in the mature tree in that you might not know where the roots have spread. I've heard that spraying the tree with compost tea will protect it from insects and nourish it as well.
summer pruning - I heard that pruning the water shoots while the tree is in leaf can help it focus efforts on growing nice fat fruit, so I did that this year. I'm not sure the result is any better than in previous years, but I did get some nice leaves for my compost -- although some of them came with freeloaders:

Like most things to do with gardening you get wildly conflicting advice everywhere. Although I was told that summer pruning would enhance fruit development and also bring more light into the ripening fruit in the tree; I also read that removing these shoots removes a nutrient source for the tree ("decreasing canopy photosynthetic efficiency and carbohydrate production") so not everyone recommends it as you're then diverting the tree to replace that lost food. We'll see what happens.
thinning - hard but necessary, removing excess nascent fruit in order to get better, bigger apples

Pruning
I've been looking up information on pruning in general as it's a complicated business, and my property also includes a neglected plum tree that has not been maintained, no longer produces well and is almost impossible to harvest because of its position and height. Here are a few sources I checked out:
Cognition (now called Canadian Organic Grower) had a helpful article from which I learned the useful issues around renovation vs. maintenance pruning.
Fruitwise has some video tutorials (and a website on heritage English apples) which give great advice on the basics of pruning including choosing the right tools for the job and proper secateur technique.
Oregon State University Extension has an article on restoring a neglected apple tree.
Rona.ca has one with notes about pruning issues specific to tree types, including plums.
Wikipedia has a nicely illustrated article that lays out what to do to trees at different ages.

Shoot before you spray

Some wonderful things come of the web. The Pest Identification Photos page, from Pest Control Canada, is surely an example of what the internet does best and is endlessly interesting. People send in photos of bugs and someone identifies them (Ed Saugstad, retired entomologist, Sinks Grove, WV surely deserves a knighthood for answering so many of the questions).


Ladybug larva, from the Pest Identification Photos page

The site also includes a helpful page on Integrated Pest Management (IPM), and some tips on Borax in the Organic Pest Solutions (although nothing else; for more organic pest control, check places like Suite101 for do-it-yourself, or Extremely Green for manufactured but allowable solutions or Pest Information for good general all-purpose information).

Wasps, leaf miners and ladybugs

My feelings towards wasps have softened since I saw one nibbling on aphids one day. I'm still nimby about having their nests in my backyard though, as is my allergic neighbour, so I'm afraid we shot this one down with a garden hose.



No change in my attitude to spinach leaf miners. My new skill this year is spotting the eggs before they can hatch and eat the greens.



My last greens harvest included this little feller, an Asian Lady Beetle larva. It's tragic and lethal to our gardens that we are more often than not unable to recognize the ladybug larva than its cuter adult version; it's an important thing to learn to identify. Ditto the eggs. Aphids for lunch!