Gardening

Small planting window – early spring vegetables

by at

The ten day forecast has us looking at warm wet weather.  Normally in March I would say wait a few weeks before planting much outside, but this is an opportunity to get some seed or transplants if you have them in the ground.  Don’t get crazy with planting right now, but if you have a few square feet in your garden you can put seed in that if you are successful will give you an early vegetable harvest.  I would still follow with another planting or two in a few weeks to stay on a normal rotation.

I plan on putting some transplants in that I started when I did a Seed Starting Program for the Four Seasons Garden Club in Logan.

plant1

They will go under cover in my kitchen garden.  I am not really worried about the cold, but the squirrels and bunnies will eat them if I don’t.  Deer would be a problem as well.  There is very little food out there for wildlife right now, so don’t plant any for them.

plant2

This is also a great time to take a look at your compost pile and think about giving it a mix.  If your compost pile looks like this:

s18

Stir it up and let Mother Nature water it for you.  I am definately a cold compost pile person, but even a little bit of improvement will go a long way towards finished compost later in spring.

plant3

Producing High Quality Fruit at Home

by at

Pruning- Pruning the fruit tree is an important step in improving fruit quality. Fire blight, powdery Fruit treemildew and summer rots can be reduced by carefully pruning out limbs harboring disease inoculum. Pruning trees should be done according to the desired structural shape of the tree.

Prune out all broken and dead branches and any sucker growth around the bottom of the tree trunk. Once the dead and broken material has been removed, the general shape of the healthy tree can be seen. Correct pruning helps improve overall air movement and sunlight penetration into the canopy. It also helps reduce disease and insect pressure. A rule of thumb I often use when pruning fruit trees is, “When in doubt, prune it out”. All pruning should be completed no later than mid-March for best results here in Ohio.

If trees have been neglected for several years, they may need to be rejuvenated. A second step is to decide how big/tall the tree should be. A tree with dwarfing rootstock can be maintained at about 8 to 10 feet tall, semi-dwarf rootstock at about 12 to 16 feet and a standard rootstock at about 16 to 20 feet tall. If your trees have not been pruned in many years, you should not cut them to the desired height in one year.

Your plan should be to reduce the tree height over a period of about 3 years by removing no more than one-third of the height each year (ex. 25’ tree to a final height of 16’— lower at a rate of about 3’ each year). Do not cut all the limbs in half or “Top” the tree, like some people and or tree trimming companies do with shade trees, to reduce their height. Pick and choose limbs that can be cut back to the approximate desired length, at a lateral branch, and make the cut there. “Work” the tree height down systematically over the time period rather topping.

When working with neglected trees do not feed the tree with nitrogen after pruning. Nitrogen applications would stimulate growth and compound the problem you are trying to fix. Water sprouts will likely develop around or below pruned areas during the spring and summer. Removal of this vegetative growth should be frequently done by rubbing off or pulling off the shoot while it is still short and green around the bottom (<10-12 inches in length). Pulling is recommended rather than cutting so you remove the entire shoot and not have a short stub remaining. If the shoots become brown and woody at the base, pulling may no longer be an option because you may cause unwanted tearing into the bark. Cutting is then preferred.

Disease Control- Early spring is the best time to apply sprays to control certain insects and diseases. Gardeners who have had problems in the past years should consider applying early season sprays to prevent or minimize pest damage to the leaves and fruit of the trees. Additional applications of fungicide and insecticide sprays during the growing season may be necessary to control specific pests. Early application of the proper sprays should minimize the use of pesticides during the remainder of the growing season.

Dormant oil sprays are intended to be used before the leaf or fruit buds open in the spring. This can effectively control many scale insects, European red mite eggs and aphids. Be sure to check the label, for temperature restrictions before applying dormant oils. Early season fungicide sprays should be applied at the green tip through pink or white bud growth stages. These sprays will help minimize diseases. Application of fungicides while trees are blooming may be made, but insecticide sprays should not be made during the flower blooming stage to protect pollinating bees. Additional applications of fungicides or insecticides may be needed to insure high quality fruit later in the season.

For more information about pruning specific trees or applying sprays correctly, contact Mark at the Monroe County Extension office at 740-472-0810. Bulletins and factsheets are available which contain pruning information. Also available are spray guides to help you produce high quality fruit your trees are capable of producing.

Seed Starting – Save the Date

by at

I have been in the basement planting many things getting ready for the upcoming gardening season.  This El Nino winter already has me thinking spring.

There will be a Seed Starting workshop at the Youth Center at the Hocking County Fairgrounds on April 12th, tuesday, at 7pm.

s8

Hope to see you there.

OSU Local Foods Week August 9th-15th

by at

Local Foods Week

The week of August 9th-15th, 2015 is Local Foods Week in Ohio and if you don’t already support locally grown food, now is a great time to start! Right now is a perfect time to support locally grown food in our state due to the wide variety of fresh produce available! Tomatoes, sweet corn, cucumbers, apples, peaches, and berries are available just to name a few!

Agriculture is Ohio’s number one industry that contributes jobs for one in seven Ohioans and more than $107 billion to the state’s economy. Ohio has many rural areas, but several metropolitan areas in close proximity, which links the rural and the urban consumer. This allows growers and their communities to produce and consume food from small, medium and large-scale family owned farms.

While Ohio ranks in the top ten states for direct sales to consumers of a wide variety of foods that include eggs, milk, cheese, honey, maple syrup, bread, vegetables, fruit and many other food products one in six Ohioans are food insecure and lack the access to fresh, healthy local foods. You are all a part of the food system of Ohio by making the daily decision on what foods you will consume.

When making your food decisions many people consider where the food was grown or raised and make an effort to develop personal connections with growers and producers to enjoy flavorful, safe, local food. The focus of Ohio Local Foods week is not only about enjoying the wonderful taste of local food but to also become more aware and better informed about the nutritional, economic and social benefits of local foods in Ohio.

The Ohio State University Extension Local Food Signature Program invites everyone to celebrate Ohio Local Foods Week this week. We encourage individuals, families, businesses and communities to grow, purchase, highlight and promote local food all the time, but we ask you especially emphasize it this week. We are also inviting everyone to participate in a challenge to spend $10 this week on local foods. Two convenient places to spend $10 on local foods in Noble County include the Farmers Market on Friday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. or the Witten’s trailer located in the BP parking lot. You will be surprised just how much you can get for $10, too! In the past I have purchased a cantaloupe, half a dozen ears of sweet corn and a couple tomatoes for $10.

To follow the event search Ohio Local Foods Week on Facebook or Twitter and post your foods you are enjoying this week. Sign up for the $10 challenge at http://go.osu.edu/olfw10dollars

Why Are the Bottom of My Tomatoes and Squash Rotting?

by at

This is the time of year we receive inquiries about blossom-end rot on zucchini and tomatoes, especially in a wet year like this. This disorder affects tomato, pepper, squash, and eggplant and occurs when soil moisture is uneven. It is easily recognized by the flat, leathery, discolored area on the blossom end of the fruit.    Blossom-end rot occurs when there is a calcium deficiency in the blossom-end of the fruit. If demand for calcium exceeds the supply during rapid fruit development, deprived tissues break down, leaving the leathery-looking blossom end to the fruit.  It may be due to lack of calcium in the soil; however, this is not usually the case. The real culprit is usually drastic changes in weather (cool to hot) or uneven or extreme soil moisture fluctuations. When these situations are prevalent during fruit development, calcium uptake is limited or non-existent and blossom end rot can occur.   What is a gardener to do? Avoid wide fluctuations in soil moisture. Calcium sprays for the fruit are sometimes recommended, but are of little value due to poor absorption and movement of the calcium to the fruit. Long term solution is to make sure the pH is at acceptable levels by adding lime to the soil (this fall will be an excellent time to apply lime).  Soil test kits are available at Extension offices to help determine your garden nutrient needs.

 

 

Pruning Tomato Plants

by at

Pruning is usually a term associated with trees or shrubs, but pruning tomato plants can be very important. When pruning a tomato plant you are pruning what are called “suckers.”Suckers are small shoots that grow out of the joint where a branch on a plant meets the stem. The joint will be in the shape of a V and if a sucker is growing it will be more in the shape of a W. You do not want to allow suckers to grow to form the W. These small shoots will eventually grow into a full size branch if left alone, which will result in a bushier, more sprawling tomato plant, but will not harm your plant. Typically, this should from the time the plant is small, but if you are finding yourself with a jungle of tomato plants, it’s not too late to start.

Pruning will promote fruit growth and allow better air circulation throughout the plant. By pinching off the sucker branches, less of the plants energy will be directed toward producing and maintaining foliage and will result in more energy being directed toward producing larger fruit that will ripen sooner. However, some studies do not recommend pruning because sucker branches will actually produce fruit. Your result may be larger amounts of smaller fruits versus larger fruits. So, it really is a personal decision on if you want to prune.

You want to make sure to prune during a dry, sunny day. Anytime you are pruning it causes an opening into the plant that is an area where disease can get in. This is similar to cutting yourself and having an open wound. If you use scissors or pruners instead, be sure to sanitize them before and after use to make sure there is no transfer of disease.

Screen Shot 2015-07-09 at 1.30.35 PM

Still Time to Plant While Harvesting

by at

Even though we are in July, there is still time to plant many things in the garden.  To figure out what you can still plant, check how many days it takes the crop to mature, then count back from October 10, which is the average first frost in our area.  If there is enough time, you can still plant.  Some bean cultivars require as few as 45 days to mature.  By the end of the month, it will be time to start planting some cooler season crops like peas, turnips and other leafy vegetables.

Yellow Poplar Weevil

by at

Yellow Poplar Weevil

 

Recently I’ve noticed in Southeastern Ohio damaged leaves on Yellow Poplar, Sassafras and Magnolia trees.  This has also generated several calls to our Extension Offices.  The cause of this damage is the yellow poplar weevil.  These are tiny insects only about 2/16” long and are sometimes thought to be ticks at first glance.  Older trees will normally sustain the attack of these pests, but if you have newly planted trees in your landscape you may want to apply an insecticidal treatment.  The following links have additional information and control strategies:  http://entomology.osu.edu/bugdoc/Shetlar/factsheet/ornamental/FSyellowpopweevil.htm, http://bygl.osu.edu/content/yellow-poplar-weevil-2.

What Happened to My Potatoes?!

by at

We tried potatoes for the first time last year with some leftover seed potatoes a friend had given us and thought it would be worth a shot. They did pretty well, even though they were small and we had enough to keep up with, having potatoes a couple nights a week. This year, we had big plans. We got more seed potatoes and had plans of needing a root cellar and were wondering, just what would we do with all the potatoes!? Well, we won’t have any trouble and I’m glad we didn’t start construction on the root cellar just yet.

 

We thought we were waiting until the right time to harvest. The vines had just bloomed and started to die. Once the plant blooms, the energy is being devoted to the production of the flower and it is unlikely that any more energy will be diverted to growing potatoes. Unfortunately, this did not occur until after the week of the non-stop rains we had. Potatoes, like most other vegetables do well with consistent watering, meaning a consistent amount of rain each week, not consistently raining for a week, as we experienced! However, we know there is nothing we can do to control mother nature and we obviously didn’t have our potato bed prepared correctly as it must have needed much more drainage.

 

When we started digging the potatoes up, we had many smaller sized potatoes that were nice and firm, but unfortunately, our best-sized potatoes had rotted in the ground before we had a chance to dig them up. We also noticed that even the smaller potatoes were covered with what looked like white bumps all over. The white bumps are actually called lenticels. Lenticels are special pores in the plant tissue that allow oxygen exchange with the outside world, allowing the potatoes to “breathe.” The large amount of moisture we have been receiving caused the lenticels to swell and therefore become visible. They may also appear in humid storage environments and as long as there are no other signs of problems of things like fungal or bacterial disease, the potatoes remain safe to eat.

 

However, the presence of the lenticels tells us a lot about the quality of our soil. We obviously received an above average amount of moisture recently and even well draining soil would be wet, but we must work to increase the drainage of our potato area in the future. It also may be that we need to do an above ground bed or plant the potatoes in large containers

 

Good luck to any fellow potato growers and if you have some of the same problems we had and need more suggestions for increasing drainage to your garden, please call the office, stop in or email pye.13@osu.edu

Unknown

Poisonous Plants

by at

Whether it is in the pasture or in your back yard it’s that time of year again where poisonous plants are around and can cause trouble if not properly identified. Some of the most common poisonous plants that affect us in our backyard and surrounding areas are poison ivy, oak and sumac. All contain urushiol, which is a plant oil that can cause a severe skin rash. However, identification of these plants can be difficult as they might be confused with other non-poisonous species.

Poison ivy grows in shady or sunny locations and may be either a woody shrub or a vine that can climb up to 150 feet tall! All parts of the plant, including the roots contain urushiol at all times of the year, even when bare of leaves in the winter. Leaf forms are variable among plants and even among leaves on the same plant however; the leaves always consist of three leaflets. Leaflets can be 2-6 inches long and may be toothed or have smooth edges. The stem that is attached to the terminal leaflet is longer than the stems attaching the other two. Fruit of the poison ivy is always in clusters on slender stems between the leaves and woody twigs. They are round and grooved with a white, waxy coating and are attractive to birds and are an important food source for deer. A common poison ivy look-alike is Virginia creeper. It is also a trailing vine but it has 5 divide palmate leaflets. It also has blue-black berries.

Poison oak is a low growing shrub that can be about 3 feet tall. It is located in dry, sunny locations and not usually in heavy shade. Poison oak displays lobed leaves, which give it the appearance of an oak leaf. The leaves are generally about 6 inches long and the middle leaflet is alike lobed on both margins and the two lateral leaflets are often irregularly lobed.

Poison sumac leaves consist of 7-13 leaflets arranged in pairs with a single leaflet at the end. Leaflets are elongated, oval and have smooth margins. The sumac plant also has reddish stems.

There are numerous other plants, trees and shrubs that can be poisonous to humans and livestock as well. If you spot something that you aren’t familiar with, please feel free to bring it to the office for identification. However, if you are having a reaction, please seek the advice of your doctor.

Poison Ivy                               Poison Oak                                 Poison Sumac

Screen Shot 2015-06-26 at 2.54.13 PM