June 17, 2009 – Martian Corn and Merry Berry Pie

Nothing tastes better than corn freshly picked from the garden! Have some fun in the vegetable garden this summer by growing your own corn. For something different on your table, try the “Red Martian” variety of organic red corn from Park Seed. Kids will especially love this tasty treat. Corn named after an alien. Sign me up! In addition to the great taste, the burgundy color of the leaves contrasts nicely with your other garden plants. Here’s how to grow it …

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Composting Problems Solved!

We’ve had a couple questions about composting problems, so here’s a checklist of what could be the problem, and how to solve it:

From my ebook “How to Master Organic Gardening”

Growing Your Own Berries

Berries are sometimes referred to as “nature’s candy,” and for good reason. They are naturally sweet and bursting with flavor – all originally intended to entice animals to gobble them up and spread the plant’s seeds far and wide.

Berry season is creeping northward – starting in February in Florida with strawberries, with
the last blackberry season not ending in northern Canada until late August. If you count cranberries, berry season doesn’t end until late September. Cranberries grow in bogs, but most other berries are easy for homeowners to grow …

Read More, including my Very Merry Berry Pie recipe!

Sowing in the Summer

It’s now close to summer, and most of you are busy growing the plants sown in spring. However, if you have a couple bare patches, or already harvested some greens, you can plant a new crop! Add some more compost or manure to the soil, and plant these vegetables that can resist the cold or taste even better with a small touch of frost:

• Carrots – You can sow in mid to late July. Carrots will be fine with a little frost, but pull before the ground completely freezes over.
• Kale – Resistant to frost, it actually tastes better with a little nip of the cold! Red Russian kale only takes 25 days before full harvest, for it’s small, delicate salad leaves.
• Spinach – Plant later in the summer for a fall crop, as the seeds won’t tolerate blazing heat. Or, plant the seeds near hard frost temperatures and they will sprout next spring!
• Argula – The hotter the weather, the spicer the plant! The flavor will be less intense if planted later in the summer.
• Cabbage – Cabbage can be planted in July and August for a fall crop. Or, if you cut off the head of a spring-planted crop high up on the stem, you can encourage more heads of cabbage to sprout.

If you happen to plant late, you can still grow most vegetables now. Plant cucumbers, beans, peppers and tomatoes, and using a blanket, boxes or other insulation will help protect them from the first few overnight frosts in the fall.

Until July 1st, get 15% off $50 at Gardener’s Supply

Your Organic Gardening Questions

Question: How can I save some fennel for my cooking – the butterfly larvae are all over it?

John

Answer: If you love to cook, and have planted lots of dill and fennel in your yard, you have probably noticed that, at several points during the season, you have ended up with tons of fat caterpillars all over the plants. That’s a good thing if you want butterflies. The Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly larvae, in particular, love to eat fennel and dill. It isn’t such a good thing if you like to cook with fresh herbs, but there aren’t any to be had in your garden. There is a way to protect a few of your plants from the munching caterpillars, though.

You need to make a little tent for your herbs that double as larval food plants. You can buy screen at your hardware store, and use some garden stakes to make a tent. We recommend sewing or taping the edges together to make a kind of a screen “bag” and then staking down the sides of the bag around the plant. It might be difficult to tell if you will have larvae on your plants , but you can check the plants with the screen over them every day to see if there are any larvae. If you find any, just remove them to another fennel or dill plant, and replace the screen. That way, you and your garden insects get a tasty meal!

Katie

Question: Is there any kind of natural mosquito repellent that I can make from plants in my garden?

Miranda

Answer: It is difficult to replicate the mosquito repelling properties of chemicals like DEET, but it is possible to grow your own mosquito repellent plants. The plants don’t repel mosquitoes just by growing in the garden, though, you have to crush the leaves and rub the oil on your skin. Because you might not know if you are allergic to some of these plants, it is always a good idea to be cautious, and only rub a little bit of the plant leaf on a small area of skin.

These plants have a naturally occurring chemical called citronellal, which repels mosquitoes.

• Bee balm (Monarda didyma)
• Lemon thyme (Thymus X citriodorus)
• Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)

These are all perennials in zones 3-8 that grow well in full sun.

Katie

Happy Father’s Day to all our Dad’s out there!