The Wrath of Nature: Aphids, Spots, Spores and Borers

Back in June I was talking with a fellow gardener and she kept reiterating how humbling gardening was and how it keeps her grounded.  I remember interpreting her meaning of 'humbling' as the feeling of amazement one gets when a plant they've started from seed bares fruit or the unbeatable freshness of just-picked produce on your plate.

Well, nature must have heard my thoughts and wanted to clear up what it really means for gardening to be a humbling experience because it seems to be using every trick in the book to make sure I understand this summer.

I wrote a few weeks ago about a rapidly progressing mildew problem I was having with my cucumber plants and how I'd cut them back to try and control it.  The spores had really gotten out of hand as can be seen in this black fuzz all over the cucumber vine below.

Here are photos of the cuts I made (left) and their current state (right).  

The leaves all grew back but the mildew continues to make them yellow.  They are actually doing better now and growing like crazy.  The organic fungicide I'd purchased proved useless, so I decided to go with an old home remedy: a weekly spray of 9 parts water to 1 part skim milk with a couple teaspoons of cooking oil thrown in for stickiness.  So far it seems to be keeping things under control.  Most importantly, the cucumber yield is back up. Below is what I was able to pick just yesterday.

As this problem seemed to be reaching a more manageable state, the lovely squash borer came into my life.  These are fun little larvae that settle right in to the interior of squash plant vines and make this happen:

The first clue is a wilted plant (left) and, upon further inspection, one may find a rotten vine (right).  Cutting into your squash vine will likely reveal one of these little friends all tucked away nice and cozy and gorged on your delicious squash vine.

Additionally, you may find deserted brown casings from the pupal stage lurking around the base of your plants. Once the borers have moved in, you're kind of screwed.  The squash plants have likely already started dying and may have even stopped producing.  However, there were a few areas of new growth lurking on my plants so I cut the good parts off and stuck the ends of the vines back in the ground hoping they might take root for a few more rounds of squash.  It worked for a couple of the plants, but not all of them.

Another line of defense I am trying against the squash borers and other types of aphids which like to help themselves to delicious garden snacks is diatomaceous earth.  So far it seems to be helping.  I've sprinkled it everywhere once a week and more frequently if it rains.

This stuff is also great for controlling ants in compost, which is what I usually use it for.  It just comes in a huge bag, so I use an old coffee can with holes poked in the lid for dusting.

I haven't had any trouble with worms eating my tomatoes except for this one below which I quickly squashed.

I also found these weird eggs and little critters just starting to come to life on the underside of a tomato leaf one day, but they were promptly executed and I haven't seen any others since.

Coupled with my weekly milk spray and diatomaceous earth dusting is removal of infected leaves from tomato plants.  Most of my plants are still showing leaf spot on the bottom leaves, but I've been able to keep it in check by taking time every couple of days to cut off the infected areas so it doesn't spread.  

While nature is definitely showing me who is boss this year, I'm learning a lot and keeping copious notes in my garden journal for the future.  Despite everything that is testing me, I'm still having lots of success which I will share soon.

Savory Corn Griddle Cakes

One of my favorite resources for recipes to use with the abundance of summer veggies is Jack Bishop, author of my two most used cookbooks.  The first, Vegetables Every Day, was a college graduation gift from my brother and sister-in-law.  It is set up alphabetically and contains several main dishes and side dishes that can be made with each vegetable.  I happened upon my other favorite, A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, sitting in someone's garbage at the curb while walking with my mom on a visit to Raleigh.  I love this book because it is divided into the four seasons, with recipes utilizing the specific vegetables available at different times of year.  For anyone looking for great vegetable recipes, I would recommend either or both of these cookbooks.

Though I am not vegetarian, I would say we only cook dishes with meat a couple of times a week during the summer due to the availability of fresh veggies from the farmers market and our garden.  I love Jack Bishop's recipes because if you want to add a little meat or change things up a bit, it's pretty easy to do.  This is just what I did last night by adding swiss chard, tomatoes, and sausage crumbles to the Savory Corn Griddle Cakes I made from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen.

Savory Corn Griddle Cakes
4 medium ears of corn, husks and silk removed
1 ounce of cheddar or monterrey jack, shredded (about 1/4 cup)
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro leaves
3/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter, plus more for cooking
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup salsa or sour cream, or Spiced Honey Syrup (recipe is in the book)


Place a platter on middle oven rack and heat to 200 degrees.  Grate the corn on large holes of a grater set inside a bowl until the cobs are clean.  Discard cobs.  Stir cheese, cilantro, milk, eggs, and melted butter into the grated corn.  Fold in the flour, baking powder, and salt until no streaks of flower remain.


Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat and lightly grease with butter.  Fill a 1/4 cup measure with batter and pour into the hot pan to make a round cake.  Repeat until the pan is filled with griddle cakes.  Cook, flipping cakes once until lightly browned on both sides, about five minutes total.  


Use a spatula to transfer the griddle cakes to the warm platter in the oven.  Repeat with remaining batter.  Serve with salsa, sour cream, or Spiced Honey Syrup.


I adapted this recipe a bit by eliminating the cilantro, using queso quesadilla, and changing the toppings.  Here are some photos of the process and the end result.

I decided to top my cakes with some sauteed swiss chard from the garden and A Way of Life Farm sausage crumbles.  I finished off one with diced garden tomatoes and the other with a light drizzle of maple syrup.  They turned out awesome!

Trouble in Paradise

This week I noticed my cucumber plants started developing strange little yellow spots on the leaves.  Of course, I immediately started researching this online and discovered my plants were being affected by downy mildew.  You can see the yellow spots starting to show up in the photo below.

I was advised by someone working at American Beauty Garden Center (a great local garden store) to try Serenade Disease Control spray, which is a bacterial fungicide safe for organic gardening.  So, I did.  The bottle of Serenade specifically says not to expose plants to water for at least four hours after application.  This also just happened to be one of the rainiest weeks we've had all summer.  Of course, every time I applied it, it would start raining within a couple of hours, sometimes continuing into the night.

This just exacerbated the mildew problem and I ended up having to cut off a lot of the leaves from my cucumber vines because it was starting to spread to the peppers, okra, chard, and lima beans.  Mildew spores hang onto the underside of leaves and are carried by wind, so it only took a couple of days for it to start affecting everything.  I also noticed that my tomatoes had started developing septoria leaf spot (photo below).

So, tonight I spent two hours in the garden clipping leaves off of nearly everything where I noticed the mildew had spread.  Information online is conflicting as to whether removal of leaves containing mildew spores is necessary, but it seems to make sense that it would be if the mildew infection spreads from one leaf to another via the spores.  Some information suggests removal of diseased plants in their entirety while other sources say that the mildew only affects the leaves.

I decided to take a risk and remove the leaves for a couple reasons.  First, my cucumber vines are way too intertwined to decide which are diseased or not, and even if I could tell, removal of just those affected would be nearly impossible.  Also, I have read in a couple different places that this specific mildew only affects the leaves, so I figured there would still be a chance the plants would survive if the problem areas were removed.  Throwing out the entire vine seemed a bit premature if there would be any chance it would sprout new leaves and survive.  For now, I just plan to apply fungicide every seven days as suggested and hope for the best.

Here is the bag of affected leaves I ended up with at the end of the night.  It's important to remember that if you are faced with this issue, the leaves need to be completely removed from your garden.  This means no compost bin, because the spores can continue to thrive there.

Updates and Adventures in Pickling

The garden is getting really huge!  I'm harvesting cucumbers, okra, and three kinds of squash daily.  Peppers, speckled limas, and peas are showing up and all the tomato plants have yellow blossoms so they should be coming soon.  I have to keep reminding myself that I planted a little later this year because I keep thinking everything is taking forever.  I've been making pickles every night and trying to be patient.  Here are some photos of how things are going!

Cucumbers 

 Yellow Crookneck, Zucchini, and Pattypan Squashes

 Swiss Chard

 Tall Telephone Peas

 Speckled Calico Lima Beans

 Several Varieties of Tomatoes

 Clemson and Red Burgundy Okra

 Beets

 Thai Chilis (You can see one to the left of my pinky.)

 Green Bell Peppers

 Hot Banana Peppers

 Jalapenos

Basil

Various pickles: Garlic dill slices and spears, swiss chard and okra 

(The brine is pink due to the color of the chard and burgundy okra.)

Jammin' It

We haven't expanded our garden to include any fruit yet, but my husband's aunt and uncle have lots of property and tons of blueberry and blackberry bushes.  They invite any willing members of the family to come and pick berries any time since they can't possibly eat them all.  My husband and I took them up on their offer and I decided to make some jam with the gallons of blueberries and blackberries we'd picked.

Though this was my first attempt at making jam, it proved to be really easy.  I decided to go the old fashioned route, avoiding the need for added pectin.  This left me with just two ingredients: berries (9 cups) and sugar (6 cups).  The first step was to squish the berries, which I did with a potato masher.

Next, I dumped them into a big pot and mixed in the sugar.  You can see, at left, that I started using a large soup pot with the blueberries.  I later ended up dumping the blueberry mixture into one of my water bath canners because boiling fruit makes A LOT of foam and everything was about to spill over.  So, if you attempt this, be advised you need a BIG pot with several inches of space beyond the height of the fruit.

Because I was making pretty big batches, the berry and sugar mixtures took quite a while to boil and thicken up.  I think it took nearly an hour of constant boiling before the desired consistency was reached. During this time, it was really important to keep stirring periodically because the fruit can become stuck on the bottom of the pot and scald.

Once the mixtures started to thicken, I had to keep testing it to see if they had reached the jellying point.  I decided to go with the cold plate method because I didn't trust my assessment of whether the jam was properly sheeting off the spoon since this was my first time.

Once the jam had reached the jellying point, I immediately removed it from the heat and funneled it into half pint jars.  I processed them for ten minutes and all sealed successfully.

I gave some away and we still have 14 jars in our pantry, so I am sure we'll be enjoying blueberry and blackberry jam for a long time!