Lazy Wife and Kentucky Wonder pole beans
Eggplants, peppers and Christmas pole lima beans
Tomatoes
Inigo, included because he's so darned cute. :)
Sunday, May 15, 2011
May garden report
I've been working really hard on reviving the garden this year after battling the drought and root-knot nematodes last year, along with the Invasion of the Giant Weeds. According to what I could find, allowing the soil to dry completely (or even better, solarizing it), then adding copious amounts of organic matter can really help knock down the number of nematodes present in the soil. I also read an article this past winter about an organic fungicide (Actinovate) that had been shown to work on nematodes in field trials, so I sprayed that on the soil this spring. So far the garden is doing much, much better this year and I'm hopeful that we'll be enjoying lots of home grown produce this summer.
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9 comments:
I have been to a lot of garden stores, but I have yet to find seeds for bunnies. It sure would be a lot easier to just pick them from the garden than running along beside them while checking to see if they are fat enough yet
John, my bunnies are not for consumption! They are hard working fertilizer producing bunnies!
I am so impressed with your garden. Mine is nowhere near so far along, but then planting was so late because of all the rain. Now it's getting too dry and I may have to water!
Inigo is cute! I used to have bunnies and they made a wonderful difference with my composting. Love that fertilizer.
Leigh, I'm in zone 8 so it's a race to get things in after the last frost, but early enough so they early summer vegs are able to produce. Overall it's been really dry so far this year and we've had really variable temperatures so far this spring, going from abnormally warm to abnormally cool and back again. Since our normal temps this time of year would be about 90F, I'm okay with today's 72F. :)
I looked and looked and could not find the photos of the Lazy Wife. I presume you are hiding behind the tomatoes?
I was too lazy to take any more pictures. ;)
Actinovate on root knot nematodes? Fabulous information! I work at the Natural Gardener in Austin, an organic-only nursery. Some days I'm at the info desk dispensing advice on customers' gardening problems, and the only advice we have for RKNs is to solarize as you said, add ground crab shells, plant French marigolds, then, after all else fails, learn to live with them (or move the garden). I'd love to hear how well this works for you, Kari. Hopefully, VERY well.
BTW, just looked through your blog a bit. A palm tree birdfeeder pole? And deep fried green beans?! You're too much. Love it.
Hey Linda,
I've been poking through your blog, too. Your garden is so cool!
Here's the article I read about the Actinovate:
http://agrilife.org/today/2010/12/22/root-knot-nematode/
I never got around to putting out plastic, but I let my soil dry out completely at the end of last summer. It was the first time I was ever happy to have no rain. Then this spring I added as much organic matter as I could and sprayed the Actinovate in with a hose-end applicator after a good rain. So far everything looks good - we'll see how well things do over the summer. But I can say that the tomato patch is in the spot that was the worst affected last year and the tomatoes are growing like crazy. :)
Thanks for the compliments and info link, Kari. Off to read it now. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it works well for you.
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