From the Gardens Registrar: What to Plant Now?; Get a Garden Buddy; Spotted Wing Drosophila; Volunteers Needed for Several Projects; Fun With Dill

Hello Gardeners,

WHAT TO PLANT NOW – At this point in the season, you can keep planting most vegetables, such as beans, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, and peppers.  With the heat, though, it’s not a good time to plant lettuce, spinach, broccoli, kale, or carrots. You can plant these cooler-weather vegetables a few weeks from now for fall crops. If your spring crops are done and you’ve pulled them out, you can always plant radishes again – they’re a quick, easy-to-grow crop - or put in more flowers.

WHO’S YOUR GARDEN BUDDY? – Being a successful gardener requires frequent visits to your plot to keep an eye on everything, pull weeds, water, and so on. But plenty of our gardeners love to garden and also love to travel, or have to travel for their jobs. Unfortunately, if you can’t be there, that doesn’t mean your plants and the weeds will go into suspended animation. Everything keeps growing whether you’re there or not. That’s why good gardeners have a garden buddy. This might be your garden neighbor, or a friend who also has one of our garden plots, or just a friend or family member from outside the garden. Whoever it is, don’t leave home for more than a week without making arrangements for your garden buddy to stop in to check your plot, water if it’s dry, pull a few weeds if they’re out of control, and pick and eat your produce if it’s ripe. Leaving ripe produce in your garden attracts insects and other animal pests, and can also lead to humans taking your vegetables because they don’t want to see them go to waste.

RASPBERRY FRUIT FLIES – Also, with raspberries starting to ripen, be sure to pick your raspberries, and don’t leave them to over-ripen and fall on the ground. This is the season for a raspberry pest called the Spotted Wing Drosophila. These insects lay their eggs on raspberries, especially over-ripe ones. Don’t encourage them. And when you pick your raspberries, be sure to eat them quickly or refrigerate them, because they may already have tiny eggs that could hatch. 

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES – We have a number of garden plots which have been given up, and which need weeding. Also, we need a poison ivy volunteer to remove poison ivy from one of our plots – is there anyone with expertise in this? These tasks are all in exchange for workday credit. Let me know if you’re interested.

BEETS AND BEANS – One of our gardeners has had beets and beans attacked by garden pests, and wants to know if anyone else is having the same situation? Please let me know.

WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THAT DILL? – Is your garden full of dill? Unfortunately, it’s difficult to just have a little of this herb, and once you have dill one year, you will always have it in future years. But fortunately, it’s very delicious, especially with cucumbers and potatoes. Here are some recipes that use it: https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/fresh-dill-recipes/

Happy Gardening, and Stay Well,

Kathryn