Camp Ketcha Garden Blog

Bugs!

2010-08-09T11:12:00.002-07:00

Today we found tomato horn worms, potato bugs, and stripped cucumber beetles in the garden. Campers were pretty amazed by the giant green caterpillar with a large 'horn' at one end. Horn worms really are pretty amazing creatures. But they sure can eat up a tomato plant in no time! The potato bugs were eating up the eggplant. Which I guess is all they could find since there are no potatoes planted in the garden this year. We squished these and left them in the garden because squished potato bugs scare away other potato bugs (smart bugs!).

One camper was concerned that we were killing something that is a part of nature. This is, of course, and important consideration. The first thing I reminded the campers of was that the string beans they had been chomping on were just as alive only a few moments before. Secondly, potato bugs are not a native insect and they eat a crop that we are trying to grow. If we (humans) were not interfering in the natural system at all, our garden plot would still be old growth forest. Instead it was once cleared for pasture, and we opened it up for a garden. We have killed trees, and grass, and weeds, and all the bugs, bacteria, and other creatures that lived on them so that we could plant crops that will feed us. To keep these plants alive, it often takes more killing: insects, weeds, and diseases. Eventually, we will decide to kill our crops so we can eat them. Farming and gardening, whether you are raising crops or livestock, always involves having to kill something. It is the circle of life that enables us all to eat.

All of this said, I do not take killing lightly in the garden. That camper was right, those little bugs are alive. I know that it is my own desires (for tomatoes and eggplant) that make it so he can't live or I can't eat. These are the choices made every day, by every farmer. What is important, I believe, is that we think about the choices we are making, we think about that bug, and his life, and recognize that him getting squished helps me to eat, and for this be respectful and grateful.

Water and Weeds

2010-08-09T11:12:00.001-07:00

This year has been rather dry, so the weeds have not have been as voracious as in typical years. Instead we have had to put a lot of energy into watering the garden. The best time of day to water the garden is in the early morning or evening. During the heat of the day a lot of the water evaporates before it can reach the plant roots, making it a waste of resources. If you have no choice but to water during the day (as is often the case here at camp, where our campers are only here in the middle of the day) it is important to be sure that only the soil gets watered and not the leaves of the plants. Not only is water wasted because plants don’t drink through their leaves, but getting wet during the heat of the day can actually hurt the plants. Plants breath and “sweat” through pores on their leaves called stomata. In the heat of the day they need to be able to do both of these things to ensure that they do not overheat. Wet leaves keep them from being able to do this, and can cause the leaves to look “burned.” So when the campers are watering we do our best to encourage them to aim for the soil, where the roots of the plants can drink it all up.

Eat the Rainbow

2010-08-09T11:11:00.001-07:00

Colorful foods contain more nutrients. It’s true. The more colorful things you eat, the more vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients you will get. Our garden is full of color this year, but many of our vegetables are not the standard colors that you think of for those foods. This year our string beans are purple and yellow, our carrots are red on the outside and orange in the center, our tomatoes are purple, orange, and red, and our cucumbers are a lemony yellow variety. So many colors to help you eat the rainbow!

Sustainable Garden Pest Management

2010-07-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful conversation today about how great it is that we seem to be staying ahead of the squash bug infestation on the pumpkins by manually squishing bugs and eggs, rather than having to spray.

In the garden, there are three groups of bugs: pollinators, predators (the bugs that eat other bugs), and herbivores (the bugs that eat the plants). In general, we really want the first two groups in the garden, but don't really want those plant eaters (like the squash and cucumber beetles). But most pesticides affect all or most of the bugs in the garden, so when we spray there is a good chance that we are hurting as many "helpers" as "hurters." By squishing the squash bugs and their eggs, we are able to keep the population of bad-guys to a minimum, while not bothering the good guys.

Another interesting factor with pesticide use is that predatory insects tend to have a much slower rate of population increase than the herbivorous bugs that they eat. What this means is that if we spray something that kills virtually all of the bugs in the garden, the plant-eating bugs are going to come back much faster than the bug-eating bugs. And with fewer bug-eating bugs in the garden, the population of plant-eating bugs is even more likely to get out of control.

This does not mean pesticides have no place in gardening. But we must recognize the full spectrum of consequences of their use, and use them as efficiently and localized as possible.

Other important practices in sustainable pest management include ensuring that crops get rotated. What this means is that we don't plant the same crop (or family of related crops) in the same place in the garden year after year. Many of the bugs that attack our garden plants spend the winter in the ground very near to the plants they were eating. If we plant in the same plants in that spot next year, the bugs can easily find them. If we move the plants some distance away, it is much harder for the bugs to find them.

Additionally, we intercrop. Intercropping means planting various crops together. Often one crop will deter or confuse a pest that is attracted to another crop. Planting the two crops amongst each other can keep the pests away.

Other tricks are planting flowers and plants that the bugs don't like. In our garden we have borage planted amongst the tomatoes to keep the tomato horn worms away, and nasturtiums planted in the pumpkins and cucumbers to keep the squash bugs away (these flowers are still very small–they were planted late–probably part of the reason they are not doing much to keep the squash bugs away right now).

And finally, sometimes we plant a trap crop. This is a crop that a pest likes more than most anything else in the garden. Our garden has both zinnias and sunflowers which are favorites of japanese beetles, and will hopefully keep these hungry bugs busy enough to stay out of our beans and other crops.

Garden Update

2010-07-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

After a few weeks where my Ketcha Garden time has been devoted just to the garden, and I've not kept up on the blog, here is a general update on the garden today.

Well, perhaps the biggest thing is that most everything is growing well, and the pests, disease, and weeds are pretty minimal. The hot, dry weather has kept the weed count to a minimum. The cucumber beetles are now relatively few and far between. There are some cabbage loopers doing damage in the few cauliflower plants, but the broccoli crop came up and was harvested last week before they could do much damage there. I discovered squash bugs and their tiny golden eggs in the pumpkin plants last week. But I squished all I could find, and this morning a group of campers and I were looking for more, but they were few and far between. A great sign!

The lettuce, spinach, and radishes are all harvested, and we are planting another succession of these this week. The string beans (bush type) are in flower, and I think we will start picking next week. Likewise with the tomatoes, which are beginning to form fruit and I believe some of the cherry and grape varieties should be ready to start harvesting next week.

We are badly in need of mulch and compost. We have run out of composted horse-manure and some of the crops (the corn especially) could use a strong dose of top-dressed compost. Our soil, being primarily clay, holds water well, but with the dry summer we have had, a mulch layer of sea weed could be extremely beneficial. If any of you out there have these as spare resources, they would be welcomed in the Ketcha Garden.

Lost Crops

2010-06-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

Well, those little stripped beetles really did some damage. My son Sylus (3) and I had fun squishing as many as we could, and I sprayed as well (and will again this week), but they certainly got ahead of us. The cucumber transplants were completely destroyed, as were the summer squash and cucumber seedlings that were just emerging from the soil. The pumpkins were damaged, but were far enough ahead that I think they will pull through.

I removed the summer squash entirely and instead planted eggplant and lettuce seedlings into that bed. These two crops are of no interest to striped cucumber beetles, so they will be safe. The bed that contained cucumbers will need to remain cucumbers, because it is an extra wide bed to provide for the large amount of space required by cucumber vines, and there is nowhere else in the garden left that we can create such a large bed.

I am going to spray again for the beetles this week and then seek out some summer squash and cucumber seedlings. The as seeds sprout and emerge from the ground they get completely destroyed by the beetles before they can even really get going. If I can find some transplants, not only will we make up for all the time we have lost with the destruction of these crops, but the transplants will also have a much better chance of surviving the beetles. If any of you have extra cucumber or summer squash seedlings that your garden has no room for, we would welcome them at camp!

I will also be sure to try to get the pumpkins a nice layer of compost this week. Not only is it helpful for them because they have just had to struggle against the beetles, but sometimes a particularly bad infestation of pests can tell us that our crops were struggling a bit in the first place- perhaps due to a lack of soil nutrients. Though there are many reasons why a particular pest may get really bad (what was planted the year before, how the season's rain/temperature are, if the pest is introduced on seedlings etc, and many other factors), it may be due in part to the plants not being hardy enough. Whatever the reason, our pumpkins will be happy to get some food!

Striped Cucumber Beetles!

2010-06-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

The big discovery of this morning was that our tiny summer squash, cucumber, and pumpkin plants are being heavily eaten by striped cucumber beetles. I visited the MOFGA pest report from last week, June 8th (www.mofga.org/Publications/PestReports/PestReports2010.aspx) and learned that I can use an organic pesticide called pyrethrum on the beetles. Pyrethrum is made from the crushed flowers of the chrysanthemum plant (you know, those colorful daisy-like flowers that everyone buys at Halloween). I went to the nursery and got some and will apply it tonight, as the beetles are most active in the morning and evening, so this is the best time to apply.

How sad it is to see so many of the little plants filled with holes, and some of them dead entirely. Everyone cross their fingers that we can get ahead of the beetles, and ensure a cucumber, squash, and pumpkin harvest!

The Three Sisters

2010-06-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

The Three Sisters is a native american planting method where corn, beans, and a winter squash are grown together. The reason these three are grown together is so that each can provide aid to the other: the corn provides a tall stalk that the beans can twine up, the beans fix nitrogen into the soil to feed the other plants, and the squash or pumpkins shade the ground, keeping it cool and preventing weeds from growing. I also recently read that the hispid (or bristly, rough) leaves of the squash keep raccoons away from the corn.

A few weeks ago I dug 15 smalls hills (about 3' x 4' and about 8 or 10" tall) and transplanted pumpkin seedlings and planted miniature popcorn seeds into alternating hills. The corn has just come up, and is now about 2 inches tall. I will wait until the corn is between 4 and 6 inches tall before I plant the beans. Because beans grow so much faster than corn, it is important to give the corn a good head start.

The Mysterious Brassicas

2010-06-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

One of the first crops that I transplanted into the garden was the brassicas. Brassicas, or cole crops, are species from the genus Brassicaseae. These include cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, colrabi, as well as the cultivated and wild mustards. These crops like the cool, damp weather of early spring and fall, so they are one of the first plantings.

Our little transplants were rescued from the compost pile at Milkweed Farm (www.milkweedfarm.wordpress.com) in Brunswick, Maine. They had been discarded because there was no room left for them in the field during the succession of planting. But because I got them from the compost pile there is really no way of knowing if they are cabbage, broccoli, or kale, or what variety of each they might be. I have a pretty good knowledge of what the seedlings of all these crops look like, but they are all so similar, that I am still just making an educated guess. I believe that most of what I brought to Ketcha is broccoli, a couple are cabbage, and one is kale. But I really am not sure. They are doing great, however, growing strong, and it won't be too long before they are beginning to bear and then we'll know for sure what they are. So when you are in the garden, take a wander past the brassicas, and see if you can guess who is going to grow into what!

Early Season Succession Crops

2010-06-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

After preparing the beds and soil, we began planting. We started with early crops –carrots, lettuce, radish, beets, spinach, and kale– which were direct seeded into the ground. These were planted in successions. What this means is that we planted one row of each, then about two weeks later, we planted a second row of each. What this does is ensure that we get a longer harvest: instead of all our carrots being ready at once, a first crop will be ready, then a couple weeks later the second crop will be ready.

We also practiced inter-cropping in these early beds, particularly with the carrots and radishes. Carrots are a relatively slow growing crop, while radishes are one of the fastest in the garden. Because of this, they are great crops to share a bed: the radishes are up and ready to harvest before the carrots really need any space. We harvest the radishes just as the carrots begin to need some more room.

Today, the radishes are just about big enough to start to pick. They need to be thinned soon, so that they have enough space to get bigger. The carrots are still tiny little seedlings. The first succession of lettuce is a few inches tall, and it too needs to be thinned. The early succession of spinach has its first true leaves. ("True leaves" are the second set of leaves that appear when a seedling emerges. (In grass crops it is a single leaf that appears from the seed, not a set of two leaves as with all other plants.) The first set of leaves to appear are called cotyledon leaves, because they are actually the two interior halves –or cotyledons– of the seed. The "true" leaves are called this because they look like what we typically recognize as a spinach or carrot leaf.) The beets are a couple inches tall and also need to be thinned. The lettuce and the beets will wait to be thinned until they are a bit bigger so that the removed little leaves can become a salad– they are still just a bit too small for that now.

Spring Preparations

2010-06-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

Dig, dig, dig. That has been the name of the game this spring. The soil at Camp Ketcha has a lot of clay in it. Because of this it does not drain water easily, so I decided early this spring that it would be important to grow in raised furrows. I laid out sections that would be walked-in rows, and sections that would be planted beds. I then dug a layer of soil from the rows, and put it onto the beds. What this means is that the soil that we are growing our plants in is slightly higher than everything else, which allows these areas to drain a little bit better. This process also loosened and aerated the soil, which is important before planting seeds and transplanting seedlings, because the tiny roots of the new plants can have a difficult time working their way into soil that is too compacted.

An additional task that I did this spring to support healthy soil in the garden was to amend the soil with composted manure. We are lucky here at Ketcha to have a heard of horses that provide quite a bit of organic matter that we can use to feed our soil. Adding organic matter to the soil not only will provide nutrients to our plants, but also improves the texture of the soil, again, creating tiny spaces in the soil for plant roots and soil creatures (like worms, bugs, bacteria, fungi, and other little garden helpers).

2010-06-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Camp Ketcha Garden Blog! This is the place for you to follow all that is happening in the Camp Ketcha children's garden. Over the summer I will be writing about what is going on in the garden and will be transcribing the daily and weekly garden journal that campers are keeping. So whether you are a camper visiting soon, one who recently did some work in the garden, or just and interested community member, please follow our blog to keep up to date on all that we are doing, observing, and learning.