June is bustin’ out all over
As the song from the Broadway musical “Oklahoma” exclaims, “June is bustin’ out all over.” That is indeed the case as our fields and forest are filling up with all sorts of plants and animals. Recently, I visited a 15acre, wooded property in Columbia County that has been surrounded by an 8-foot tall deer fence for the past 20 years. I was astonished at the expanse and the diversity of the plants growing there. I wish every forest landowner in our region could see what a forest without deer looks like.
The deer population in our region has devastated our forests where they exceed the carrying capacity. This is the time of year when deer switch their diet from primarily woody browse, to herbaceous plants. This means they will soon stop eating your rhododendrons and other shrubs and begin to eat your vegetable garden plants.
There are a number of effective deer repellants sold at garden centers, but make sure the product you use is safe to use on vegetables. I think the home remedy using a couple of rotten eggs, plus a cup of milk, strained in a gallon of water, with a few drops of dishwashing liquid added, is pretty safe and effective and also inexpensive!
Garden plants that are seemingly cut off at ground level, with the top laying next to the stem, may be the victims of cutworms. These nocturnal caterpillars sometimes cut off individual leaves or the whole plant. Soil-applied insecticides will kill them, but you can also wrap the lower stem with aluminum foil to present a physical barrier.
Remove the foil “collar” when the stem is thick enough to withstand cutworm attacks. Plants cut off at ground level and missing, may have been eaten by rabbits or groundhogs (woodchucks). These critters have preferences as to what they may eat. They may eat winter squash transplants, but ignore zucchini growing right next to them. They may selectively eat certain flower buds, while ignoring others nearby. Woodchucks are hard to fence out since they can tunnel under most wire fences, but if you bend and extend the chicken wire about 12 inches out on the bottom, in an “L” shape, they generally won’t dig under from that far away.
Transplanted vegetables that were set out too early in the colder regions are looking pretty much like they did when they were transplanted weeks ago. Odd-colored leaves, brown blotches, and stunted growth are common symptoms of cold soil. It’s a good idea to pinch off the first clusters of flowers on tomato and pepper transplants. This allows the plant to put its energy into vegetative growth and not into trying to ripen fruit. In the long haul, your total harvest will be much higher, if you sacrifice the first fruit. If you had problems with early blight on your tomato plants, now is a good time to apply a protective fungicide before any visible signs of disease. Fungal diseases cannot be “cured” once symptoms appear, they must be prevented.
The soil in my garden is still too cold to plant sweet corn in an area I grew potatoes in last year. It is a good idea to rotate crops by family to avoid recurring insect and disease issues. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and eggplant are all in the nightshade family and share the same pests. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts likewise, as are squash, cucumbers and pumpkins. I am not growing potatoes this year anywhere in my garden, since for the past few years, voles have eaten most of the crop. I rarely plant sweet corn since it requires so much space, but this season I will trade my spuds, for some sweet corn.
I put up a 10-foot section of drain gutter to one of my sheds to capture rainfall and much to my delight, the runoff from only an inch and a half of rain, filled a 250-gallon tank overnight! I threw in a couple of “Mosquito Dunks” and added fittings to allow a garden hose to be attached to the bottom drain of the tank. For the first time in 22 years, I can water my garden without hauling five-gallon pails down the hill!
I also replaced the rough cut, 1-inch by
8-inch, hemlock boards that I use to frame my raised beds. These untreated, unseasoned boards survived almost 20 years with no treatment whatsoever! Had I known I would live this long, I might have applied a wood preservative and they might still be functional! The Cooksburg sawmill, which is very close to my home, sells, green, roughcut hemlock and pine boards as well as woodchips, sawdust and shavings at very reasonable prices. It pays to purchase as local as possible, to support our small businesses.