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Plant
Profile: Beets!
Beets are one of the most nutritious vegetables you can grow. They are also versatile, sweet, and an excellent spring or fall cool weather crop. Now is the time to start thinking about planting beets for the fall. Swiss chard is a relative of the beet. However, you eat the leaves of Swiss chard, and the roots of the beet …
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Butterfly Gardening – Welcome Your Winged Friends
Even if it’s mid-summer, you can still plant a butterfly garden and welcome winged friends to your yard. Many butterflies go through several generations during a single summer, and now is the time to lure adult butterflies from a first or second generation this summer to the garden to lay eggs on host plants. Once the eggs hatch, you’ll have your own little butterfly farm right outside your window.
Read More, including a video Katie shot of a big fat Black Swallowtail caterpillar in her butterfly garden!
2 Tomato Recipes
Most of you will be picking your tomatoes now, and if you planted them all at once, you’ll have hordes of them in tubs! Two solutions: 1. try staggered plantings next year (plant your vegetables a week after another, so they ripen continuously throughout the year), and 2. eat them! Here’s two recipes:
Tomato-Bread Soup
Chop four onions and six cloves of garlic. Sautee on medium heat with 1/4 cup olive oil until onions are soft.
Coarsely chop eight large, ripe tomatoes. Put them in the pot with the onions. Add leaves from two large stems of basil. Add water just to cover the tomatoes. Boil until the tomatoes are cooked, soft.
Puree 3/4 of the mixture in a blender, and add back to soup. Stir in four cups of french bread pieces, torn up. Stir until heated.
Serve with grated Parmesan cheese and fresh basil.
Cold Pasta Toss
Dice six medium sized ripe tomatoes. Discard inner pith.
Chop one medium red onion into small pieces.
Crush three cloves of garlic.
Cook one pound of angel-hair pasta, al-dente (two minutes), drain
Toss together all ingredients with 1/4 cup olive oil. Add 1 tablespoon of oregano.
Serve chilled.
Proper Pruning – Try Bypass Pruners
 Bypass pruners are one garden tool that no gardener should live without. Once you prune your roses, or your lilacs with a high-quality pair of bypass pruners, you will never pick up a pair of scissors or anvil pruners again! Bypass pruners produce the cleanest pruning cut because they work less like a knife and more like scissors….
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Solving Tomato Troubles
 This is the time during the summer that tomato problems start to show you if they are happy with the way you are growing them, or unhappy. They show signs of stress and insect damage. In Northeast North America, there has been an outbreak of tomato disease affecting many tomato growers – both commercial and homeowners. Unfortunately, you can’t fix every problem that might plague your tomato plants, but you can help with some of them. Here are some of the most common tomato “issues” and how to fix them.
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Your Organic Gardening Questions
Question: Can I trap slugs with beer?
Peter
Answer: Yes! You can trap slugs with beer. This is an “old wives tale” that is actually true. In order for this “trick” to work well, follow these steps:
- Get a flat-sided container like a butter tub, tuna can, etc.
- Bury it in the garden so that the lip is even with the soil line.
- Fill it about 1/2 of the way with beer.
- Check it in the morning and find dead slugs!
The straight-sided container is important-if it has an angle, the slug might crawl out. Also, burying the container allows for the slug to “plop in” and drown. Gross, but true. The slug might not exert effort to crawl up and over a container in the garden. For more about this an other garden remedies, check out “The Truth about Garden Remedies” in our Organic Gardening Bookstore!
Katie
Question: We’re having a problem with ants building large hills at the base of some of our shrubs. In some cases the plants are dying or at least are in dire stress. As we have a pet dog roaming around we don’t want to use any harmful chemicals. Can you suggest a safe solution for the plants and our wheatie Indy?
Brian
Answer:Ants are more of an annoyance than a true problem, unless they are fire ants. Here are some ways to get rid of ants without killing the plant they are swarming around:
- Spread diatomaceous earth around the plants. This will form a protective area around the plant.
- Buy some chewing tobacco and steep it like a tea. Strain out the leaves and pour the mixture over the ant hill.
- Purchase a citrus-based ant killer from the garden center. Use it according to the instructions on the bottle. Make sure to not spray these directly on the plants, as you will burn the leaves.
Chris
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