Spring garden-May 2012

DROUGHT…frost and insects


I decided to be efficient at the beginning of spring…I would work outdoors in my garden on sunny days and write blogs about what I did on the rainy days. After all, it always rains in the spring, doesn’t it? Well today is July 7, and no it is not raining today; it is just hot as blue blazes (108 degrees predicted) and I figure it’s time I got a blog in, precipitation or not.

I began to have a suspicious premonition when we started having consistent 80 degree May temperatures in early March. Could this global warming thing be for real? If so, how could I deal with a new “normal” reality? Where was the silver lining in this black cloud? If life was giving me lemons…how could I make some margaritas? Let me emphasize that everything which follows from here on is based on the fact that my soil (soil?) is pure sand. I read one author who said that when the first warm days of spring hit and he had a terrible itch to put in a garden that he went fishing instead. That is probably great advice for anyone with much clay in their soil. Working clay before it is dry enough supposedly ruins it for years. But I have a garden on high sand which faces southeast and warms weeks earlier in the spring and lasts weeks later in the fall than most gardens. The strong negative to sand (aside from the total lack of plant nutrients) is that the annual drought in July and August burns everything in it to a crisp.

What appeared the obvious solution to my particular dilemma was to plant early and fight the last of the spring frosts but be able to harvest by early July and then let the garden sit mostly idle and empty until rains and cooler weather returned in late August or September. At that time when there was again adequate moisture I would again replant and have a second garden of fall crops. What would I do during the dead heat of summer? Make compost. There should be plenty of dried up crop residues from the first harvest, especially cornstalks. This would be my “brown” material for the compost. The “green” material would be “garbage” in the form of melon rinds and melon culls. Watermelons are a natural desert plant and the summer drought only sweetens them up. Compost really rots quickly if kept moderately damp in really hot weather and so should be ready to be spread for the fall garden…at least as mulch if not completed humus.

So in early March, that was my plan to battle the usual summer drought…battle the frost early, get plants up and fairly good size before the insect hordes hit them and then allow the early summer drought to help ripen the produce. My most important concept for battling insects organically without insecticides is to get out of sync with and ahead of their natural life cycle. This year I have had to do nothing for insect control…not even spraying with soapy water. The drought and heat probably killed some of them too.

That was my plan for dealing with a “normal” summer drought, global warming and high sand ground. But a nagging doubt or premonition lingered in the back of my head. What if there was a bad spring drought in addition to the summer drought? Part of me wanted to blow this idea off; it always rains here in the spring…after all, this is Tornado Alley. Spring storms were bound to come. On the other hand Texas and the southwest had experienced extreme drought last year and Georgia and the southeast the year before. Maybe it was our turn this year. It was. By the time summer arrived we were a full foot behind the normal annual rainfall. According to my rain gauge we’ve received a total of only 3 inches of rain in two storms early in spring; since summer began we have received nothing. The grass died months ago and now the bushes and trees are struggling. If you’ve ever been barefoot on a hot beach you know what plant roots are going through all day long. I tried to get at least a thin mulch down in the garden from last fall’s leaves, dried bush beans, corn stalks and one bale of straw over several ply of newspaper. I read in a gardening book once that water is the elixir of life. How true! Thank God for the aquifer that lies beneath my high sand and my deep well down into it. I have a very rudimentary drip irrigation hose system which I constantly patch with duct tape. These three things along with planting early saved my garden. Nine tenths of my melon and corn patches were parched bone dry, but there was a six inch strip right over the corn and melon roots which the duct-taped drip irrigation kept just moist enough.

Now I don’t mean to brag (Hell, I am bragging and you know it, so why should I even bother lying) but despite the conditions our garden did OK. As I sit typing this in the rear utility room of our home I see three large boxes of newspaper–wrapped tomatoes (in addition there are still four producing tomato plants in the garden), there are probably 50 pounds of potatoes (plenty to last us until sweet potatoes come in for the winter meals), a small freezer filled with corn, beans, asparagus, grated zucchini and a little borsht soup. As I look through the kitchen door there are probably 15 watermelons and cantaloupe behind the kitchen table cooling in front of the air-conditioner vent (plenty more watermelons still out in the patch). The refrigerator and its freezer are likewise packed with corn on the cob, summer squash, beets etc. It is one of those years when there is plenty for us and family and friends, but not enough to sell. Sitting in the heat in a farmer’s market is not much fun anyway; I think I’d rather give produce away.

The drought has taught me a few things, like harvesting early. The virtues of a “vine-ripened” tomato or melon are much over-rated. Most produce will continue to ripen after it is picked and be better off for it. I don’t know how many times I’ve told my wife “either I pick it early and I get it or I wait and the worms and bugs get it.” In these temperatures a cantaloupe that is “almost ripe” in the morning can go to “cooked” and ruined after another day in the sun. Tomatoes are members of the night shades and poisonous, I think, to most pests. The only thing that bothers mine when they’re green are those giant horned green tomato worms (and they can be controlled by hand picking and heel squashing) but let one turn red and some bug will take a few bites and rot will set in and the tomato is lost. Best to pick tomatoes when they are opaque green and let them ripen in the house. I had a gardener friend who complained that she had grown nice large green tomatoes but that the drought and triple-digit heat caused them to fall to the ground before they turned red. I suggested that she treat summer tomatoes exactly like she would the last one before a fall frost. Pick them green, wrap them in newspaper and store them one or two rows deep in a cardboard box. They ripen perfectly, no insect damage and you can often check them without unwrapping them with a touch or gentle squeeze…hard, they are still green; soft, and they are turning red. This allows for a longer eating season as a dozen or so ripens each week; leave them on the vine and they will all ripen at the same time. I pick cantaloupe after they turn from green (hard to see, camouflaged among the leaves) to beige (real easy to spot against green background). More often than not I pick them before the vine “slips” easily from the fruit. I take them in the house to just sit out and ask my wife to sniff them once in a while. When the cantaloupe gets that fragrant “musk melon” smell, they are ready to be cut and refrigerated. Get the corn early too, or the ear worm will do too much damage.

So that is where things stand now. Much of the garden has been harvested and is taking a rest under cornstalk mulch. The watermelons and sweet potatoes are drought hardy and will muddle through with a little irrigating. I have Waltham butternut winter squash growing with mulches around their root bases and shaded by the still standing stalks of the corn patch they grew in. Asparagus, rhubarb, four tomato plants, a few egg plants, carrots, and bell peppers still require watering but none take up much room and all should take the heat well if kept watered. Darn…it’s hot! Think I’ll get a big glass of ice tea, eat some salted cold watermelon and wait for rain.