Lessons I Learned in the Garden...So Far

I am learning a lot about gardening this year. For instance, I have learned that rabbits can get into and poop in your garden through fairly small fence holes. Not that I'm complaining about the rabbit poo, because it makes fantastic fertilizer. And they really aren't eating the beans any more--I think the plants have gotten to tough for the bunny palate.

I have learned that weeds grow faster than plant, and that I really need to mulch before the weeds take hold.

I have learned not to plant cucumbers near any other plants, because they will spread wildly and choke them out.

I have learned to plant herb seeds directly into the soil instead of trying to start seedlings and transplant them. All of my herb transplants died.

I have learned that hornworms and slugs are really disgusting, especially when you harvest zucchini and smash a slug with your hand in the process. They turn into slimy brown goo, no matter how small.

I have learned that if I go away for vacation, even for just a few days, I will have a hellish harvest when I return. Which is what I am dealing with today. Here are today's harvest figures:

• 8 zucchini (one was too large to include in the picture);
  
• 1 white onion and 1 puny yellow onion (these were testers so I could see how large they are getting);
  
• some dill;
  
• 17 cucumbers; and
  
• 60 sun sugar tomatoes

Next year, I will keep track of harvests in weight instead of number of items, which will give me a different way of calculating my harvest success. Meanwhile, I need to be thinking about what I will plant soon for fall harvest.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 69
Cucumbers: 58
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 1
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 108

Planting a Peck of Pickled Peppers...Well, Just a Few, Really

It was a beautiful day, so I decided it was time to plant the pepper seedlings: 9 California Wonder sweet peppers and 6 Chinese Giant heirloom peppers. They've been seedlings long enough, in my view, and I think they will grow faster out in the regular garden. Now that the rabbit fence completely surrounds the garden, I think it's safe to put them out.

David conveniently mowed the yard today, leaving me a couple of bags of grass clippings to use for mulch. After hoeing up the weeds in the empty section of garden (tough work!), I planted the peppers and mulched around them, using leftover rain water to water each individual pepper plant. We'll see how many survive the transplant. I'm not even certain I'm planting peppers at the right time--most gardeners probably have had their peppers in for a month or more and may even be harvesting at this point. Unfortunately, I only have so much energy, and have to put things out when I can.

After the planting, I went inside to rest up a bit and shredded my next batch of newspaper for mulching between plant rows. As you can see from the picture, the onion/shallot/bean section of the garden is weed-ridden, and I will need to weed first, then lay down the shredded newspaper base, followed by grass clippings. I did that previously with the tomatoes, and I am happy to report that I still have no weeds growing in that section of the garden, and the tomatoes are happily growing in the moisture-retaining mulch. But I won't get to the weeding and mulching of this section until tomorrow.

The Benefits of "Spider Mulch"

I stopped by the local Goodwill thrift store today and came home with a copy of The Experts Book of Garden Hints: Over 1,500 Organic Tips and Techniques from 250 of America's Best Gardeners. The book is copyrighted 1993, so it's a bit dated, but it seems to have some very useful information in it and, after all, only cost me $2.

I was thumbing through the book, looking for information about how to eradicate Japanese beetles (nothing new on that front), when I stumbled across the subheading "Use 'Spider Mulch'" under "Bringing In the Good Bugs."

Apparently, by using grass clippings as mulch in my garden, I am using what one of "America's Best Gardeners" calls "spider mulch," apparently because it attracts spiders (I have seen lots of evidence of them in the garden where I have mulched--[shiver]), and those spiders are beneficial critters that eat the bad bugs. Here's the entry about "spider mulch":

Mulching your crops with hay or dried grass when you plant in the spring will attract spiders--a formidable natural "pesticide" that can drastically reduce insect damage in vegetable gardens, says Susan Riechert, Ph.D., a professor of zoology at the University of Tennesee at Knoxville. Dr. Riechert conducted a two-year study comparing the insect damage in hay-mulched and bare-ground vegetable plots. She found 60 to 80 percent less damage--and natural spider populations 10 to 30 times higher--in the hay-mulched gardens. Then when Dr. Riechert regularly removed the arachnids from the mulched plots, insect damage immediately climbed to levels comparable to those in the bare-ground gardens.

Spiders need high humidity, moderate temperature, and some type of structure to hide in. Peak spider migration occurs in April and May, when most gardens are still fairly bare. A garden mulched early in the growing season will provide a better habitat and end up with more resident spiders, Dr. Riechert explains.

Any bulky mulch that keeps the ground moist and cool offers an attractive habitat. Hay mulch, shredded newspaper, and leaf litter are examples.

Dr. Riechert adds, "You can't use any chemicals, or you'll wipe out the spiders along with the pests. But that shouldn't be a problem. In my opinion, backyard gardeners can virtually eliminate the need for chemicals by using spiders."

On reflection, I realize that the only bugs I have noticed in my garden are the spiders that crawl out of the mulch when I move it or add to it. I'm using both shredded newspaper and grass clippings, so I'm sure I've encouraged many spiders to move in. I don't use any chemicals on my garden since I don't want chemicals anywhere near my food, so the spiders have a safe haven for food foraging. Let's hope that they find Mexican bean beetles and squash bugs tasty--those are the two pests that my past gardens have had the most trouble with!

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