Author: Prime Ram

Most gardeners growing lettuce, herbs, or things like carrots have at some point had a plant suddenly change its plans. Instead of continuing to make the leaves, roots or stems you’re actually hoping for, it shoots up a long flower stem, and it often feels like this happens in just one night. Once a plant starts to bolt, the bits we eat normally become hard, bitter, or stringy, and because of that, many gardeners think of it as a complete disaster. However, scientists who study plants say bolting isn’t a sickness, or something the plant is missing, or something gone wrong – it’s a completely normal part of how the plant grows and lives, and it’s set off by particular things in its surroundings.

If you know what causes bolting and which plants do it most easily, you can hold it off with easy gardening tricks. And sometimes, letting a plant bolt can actually be surprisingly helpful in the garden.

What Triggers Bolting in Vegetable Gardens

Bolting is what happens when a plant changes from just making leaves and roots to getting ready to reproduce with flowers and seeds. It’s mostly started by how long the days are and the temperature, so the plant gets the message that its time to grow is almost over. For lettuce, spinach, cilantro, radishes and other plants which do well in cooler weather, they bolt as days get longer and it warms up in spring and into summer. When it’s more or less over 75 or 80 degrees for many days in a row, and the day is over 14 hours long, these plants get the message from inside them to flower and make seeds as quickly as they can to finish their lives.

 

Which Crops Are Most Likely to Bolt

The leafy greens that like cooler weather are the vegetable garden plants most likely to ‘bolt’ (go to seed). Lettuce, spinach, arugula, cilantro, bok choy will bolt within just a few days if we get a hot spell. Radishes, beets, carrots, turnips, which are root vegetables, also bolt when the temperature goes up and down a lot or if it’s warm for a long time, although it usually takes them a bit longer. Onions, leeks, celery, and parsley are plants that are meant to grow for two years and usually bolt in their second year, but if there’s a cold spell and then warm weather, they can be fooled into bolting in their first year, and this is called vernalization.

Strategies to Delay Bolting

You can’t completely stop bolting, it’s in a plant’s genes and happens because of the weather, but you can certainly slow it down in a number of ways. If you get ‘crops that easily bolt’ in the ground as early as you can in the spring, they’ll benefit from the cooler temperatures and shorter days, and those conditions discourage them from flowering. What’s more, you can select varieties of those plants which are bred to be ‘bolt-resistant’ or ‘slow to bolt’ and this will give you a longer time to harvest. Reducing the amount of heat they get is helpful, so using shade cloth or putting them near taller plants for afternoon shade will do the trick. Also, water them regularly, as when they are dry they’re much more likely to bolt, and nearly all plants that are likely to bolt will be quicker to do so if they’re short of water.

The Surprising Benefits of Letting Plants Bolt

Gardeners who have been at this a while will often encourage plants to ‘bolt’ (go to seed) instead of trying to stop it. When plants bolt they flower and these flowers draw in pollinators, and the good bugs that help your garden. Lots of parasitic wasps, hoverflies, and ladybugs especially like cilantro flowers, and they all eat the kinds of pests that usually bother things like your aphids. Dill, fennel, and parsley flowers do the same kind of work. If you let some plants flower and make seeds, you also get seeds for planting next year, at no cost to you. A single bolted lettuce plant, for instance, can create thousands of seeds, plenty for you and to give to your neighbors for many years to come.

 

Key Takeaway

When plants ‘bolt’ (go to seed) because of the warmth and longer days, that’s perfectly normal; it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. Lettuce, spinach, cilantro, radishes, and other crops that do well in cool weather are the ones most likely to do this. You can slow down the process by planting early, selecting types of plants bred to be slower to bolt, giving them shade in the afternoon, and doing lots of succession plantings (planting a bit at a time). If they do bolt and flower, though, those flowers are good for bees and other pollinators, and you’ll get seeds to use for planting next year, so even a plant that seems to have finished producing can actually be a benefit for the future.

Growing garlic in your garden is wonderfully satisfying. From just one clove put in the ground in the fall, you get a whole bulb by next summer and don’t have to do a lot to it while it grows. However, lots of gardeners get rather small bulbs, heads which are too small and have thin cloves that really don’t make the long wait worthwhile. Usually, what separates so-so garlic from spectacularly large, full bulbs is a few choices about how you plant and how you look after it in the first few weeks of springtime when it is actively growing.

Choosing the Right Garlic for the Climate

Generally, garlic comes in two main kinds: hardneck and softneck. Hardneck garlic grows a firm, upright stem (this stem is called a scape), has fewer, though bigger, cloves in each bulb, and needs a cold winter to grow as it should, which is why people in gardening zones 1 to 7 often choose it. Softneck garlic doesn’t make scapes, has lots of little cloves, will keep for a longer time after you’ve dug it up, and can handle warmer winters. Consequently, it’s a better bet for zones 7 to 10. Garlic often doesn’t grow well because of being given the incorrect kind for where you live. What’s good to know is that garden shops in warmer areas will usually only sell softneck types, and seed companies in the north mostly have hardneck, so a lot of the choosing for you has been done.

 

When and How to Plant for Maximum Bulb Size

For the best results, put garlic in the ground in the fall, about a month and a half before the ground is likely to freeze. This gives the individual parts of the bulb a chance to grow roots before the plant goes to sleep for the winter, and that gives it a big advantage when it starts growing again in the spring. When you plant each clove, the pointy side should be facing upwards, and it should go two or three inches into the soil with four to six inches between each one. How deep you plant them is important; if they aren’t deep enough, they can be pushed out of the ground as the temperature goes up and down during freezing and thawing, but if they’re too deep, the plant uses up energy just getting through all the extra dirt. After you’ve planted them, put on a nice thick layer of straw or broken-down leaves, around four to six inches deep. This protects the soil, keeps the temperature more even, and stops weeds from growing next spring.

The Spring Care That Makes the Biggest Difference

Garlic really likes to eat, and it’s helped by getting extra nitrogen while it grows quickly in the spring. When you see the first green tops pushing up in early spring, and then again three or four weeks after that, give it a boost with composted manure, blood meal, or a general organic plant food. This is how you get it the good stuff it needs for lots of healthy leaf development. Actually, for every leaf the garlic plant makes, the bulb will have one layer of covering, so more leaves usually means a bigger bulb when you harvest, and one that’s better protected. Watering regularly in the spring is just as crucial. Garlic does best with around an inch of water a week when it’s actively growing, but it’s no good for the roots to be sitting in overly soggy soil.

Why Removing Scapes Increases Bulb Size

In late spring, hardneck garlic grows a curved flower stem, this stem is called a scape. If you let the scape stay on the plant, it sends the plant’s energy into growing tiny little garlic seeds at the end of it, and that means the garlic bulb underground won’t get as big. Agricultural colleges have shown that taking the scape off when it’s fully curled, but hasn’t yet straightened out, can make the bulbs ten to fifteen percent heavier. Plus, the scapes you’ve taken off are a lovely thing to eat, having a subtle garlic taste, so you get something nice from getting rid of them!

 

Harvesting and Curing for Best Results

You can harvest garlic in the middle or later part of summer, depending on where you are, when the lowest three or four leaves have browned, but the rest of the plant is still green. If you dig it up too soon, you will get little garlic bulbs that haven’t finished growing. But if you leave it in the ground for much too long, the outer layers will fall open and rot, and you won’t be able to keep it good for very long. Once you’ve taken the garlic from the earth, it needs to dry or “cure” in a place that’s warm, dry and has plenty of air circulating for between two and four weeks. Good curing means those outer layers dry all the way through, locking in the water and flavour. Hardneck garlic that has been properly dried will be good for four to six months, and softneck garlic can stay good for eight months, or even longer.

Key Takeaway

To reliably get really big garlic, you need to pick a kind that suits where you live, put it in the ground in fall at the proper depth and cover it with a generous layer of mulch. Early in spring, the plants will benefit from extra nitrogen, and if you’re growing hardneck garlic, you should snip off the scapes. And, you’ve got to dig them up when they are ready. Each of these things builds on the previous one, so if you don’t do even one, you’ll get much smaller bulbs at harvest.

You can harvest pumpkins and winter squash in September or October and enjoy them for food all the way through January, February or even March if you get them ready correctly after pulling them from the garden. This preparation, called curing, is straightforward but really important. It makes the outer skin thicker, allows little scrapes and marks on the surface to get better, and lowers how much water is inside the orange part. All of these things make them last a lot longer in storage. Without curing, even the toughest types of winter squash will start to spoil in just a few weeks after you’ve harvested them.

What Happens During the Curing Process

When squash is cured, you basically keep it in a warm, dry place and this causes the skin to go through a lot of changes. As it slowly loses a little water, the skin gets tougher and firmer, which is a much better defense against spoiling from things like bacteria and mold. All those little nicks, scratches, and injuries to the stem (and you’re almost certain to get them when you harvest) develop a sort of protective scab over them, keeping rot at bay. Also during curing the starch within the orange part of the squash begins to turn into sugar, and that’s the reason a butternut or acorn squash that’s been properly cured is clearly sweeter than one you just took off the vine.

 

The Ideal Curing Conditions

Winter squash does best when it’s “cured” (or dried) in a warm, dry place with air moving around it. Eighty to eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit is the perfect temperature, and the air shouldn’t be too damp (between 50 and 60 percent humidity). Outside on a patio table, on a dry bit of grass, or on something raised and fully in the sun is good when the autumn weather is warm and dry. But if it looks like it’s going to rain or the temperature falls below fifty degrees at night, the squash needs to go somewhere warm inside, for example, in a garage, a sunroom, or a porch that’s closed in. Most types of squash need ten to fourteen days to cure, although some people who garden leave them for three weeks, which makes the skins very firm.

Which Varieties Need Curing (and Which Do Not)

With butternut, spaghetti, hubbard, kabocha, and pie pumpkins, almost all kinds of winter squash improve if you cure them. However, surprisingly, experts at agricultural centers don’t recommend curing acorn squash; keeping it warm for too long will actually make it go bad sooner. You should get acorn squash into a cool place (between 50 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit) right away after picking. And delicata squash is a bit like acorn squash: it doesn’t last as long, usually only two or three months with curing, while types with thicker skin can be good for four to six months.

Long-Term Storage After Curing

When winter squash is completely at its best, put it in one layer (don’t pile them up) in a place that’s dark, cool, and dry and where air can move around. Fifty to fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit is the best temperature and the moisture in the air should be somewhere between fifty and seventy percent. A basement, a root cellar, an extra room that isn’t heated, or a garage with insulation are often good enough. You should look at the squash frequently for soft parts, mold, or anything else showing it’s going bad, and use or get rid of any that have these issues so they don’t make the others spoil. If you treat them right, butternut squash will be good for five or six months, and a blue hubbard squash can be kept for as long as eight months.

 

Key Takeaway

If you let pumpkins and winter squash sit at between 80 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit for ten to fourteen days once you’ve picked them, their skins will get harder, any cuts or bruises will mend and the starch inside will turn into sugar. This makes them keep for four to eight months, though how long exactly depends on the type of squash. Acorn squash is different; don’t cure those, just put them in a cool place. And for the best chance of keeping any squash for a long time, after curing, spread them out in a single layer somewhere between 50 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit where air can move around them easily.

You’ll find a ‘days to maturity’ number on almost all seed packets at garden centers: 60 days for bush beans, 75 for tomatoes, 30 for radishes. Lots of gardeners take this number as a promise, beginning the count from the day they plant and fully anticipating being able to gather their vegetables in precisely that amount of time. So when the harvest doesn’t appear for weeks longer than they planned, or even shows up a little early now and then, they get annoyed. However, the seeds themselves aren’t at fault, nor is the weather or how you’re looking after them. The issue is that most people don’t understand what ‘days to maturity’ really tells you.

The Starting Point Is Different for Different Crops

Something seed packets almost never tell you, and it’s important, is where you begin counting the days to when you can harvest. It depends on if you plant the seeds directly in the ground or if you start them inside and then move them out. With things you directly sow, like beans, peas, corn, radishes, carrots, lettuce, the number of days to maturity begins on the day you put the seed in the garden. But for plants you start inside and then plant as seedlings, such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and squash, the ‘days to maturity’ are calculated from when the seedling actually goes into the garden, not from when you originally planted the seed indoors.

Therefore, if a tomato packet says “75 days to maturity”, it’s 75 days from when you put the young plant in the garden. Given that tomatoes are generally grown inside for six to eight weeks before going out, it’s actually about 115 to 130 days in all from seed to harvest.

 

Why Actual Harvest Times Vary From the Packet

How long your vegetables actually take to grow, even if you begin at the right time, will often be 10 to 20 days off the time on the seed packet. Seed packet dates usually come from test gardens where everything is as good as it can be: the temperature stays at the best level, plants get perfect amounts of water, full sunshine, and good soil. It’s pretty rare for a typical home garden to have all of that. Growth gets slower and things take longer to mature in unusually cold weather. If it’s cloudy, plants have less sunlight for making energy. Plants won’t develop as quickly with bad soil or if you don’t water regularly. But very hot summers with long, sunny days, on the other hand, might make your produce mature even faster than the packet says.

How to Use Days to Maturity for Garden Planning

Good gardeners don’t think of “days to maturity” as a strict countdown. It’s more a way of judging how long things will take compared to other types of tomatoes. So, a tomato said to be ready in 60 days will be ready to pick before one that’s 85 days, and it won’t likely be exactly on that number of days. This comparing of times is particularly helpful for people in places that don’t have long summers; they need to choose tomatoes that will ripen before the first frost in autumn. To decide if a particular tomato has a chance of being harvested, you can take its “days to maturity”, subtract that from the date of your first expected frost, and then add on fourteen days to be safe.

 

Key Takeaway

When a seed packet says how many days until something is ready to harvest, that time is calculated from when you first put the seeds directly into the ground for things you’ve planted outside as seeds. However, for plants you began inside and then put in the garden as little plants, the count starts from when you put them in the garden. A lot of the time gardeners are puzzled when their crops take weeks longer to harvest than they thought, and that’s because of this one difference. It’s much better to use the number on the packet to get a general sense of timing, and to allow for the fact that growing happens in the real world, with all its complications, to get a plan that’s actually likely to be correct.

Buying strawberry plants with nothing on their roots (they’re asleep, as it were, and don’t have any soil around the roots) is the cheapest and most common way to start a whole new lot of strawberries. Twenty-five of these ‘bare root’ plants will generally cost you less than just one strawberry in a pot at a garden store. Also, bare root plants frequently get going more quickly. From the very start they can push their roots right into your garden’s own soil, instead of having to adjust from the soil they were in a container. You’ll do best with them by planting at the correct time of year, at the proper depth, and in soil you’ve readied for them.

When to Plant Bare Root Strawberries

With bare root strawberries, get them in the ground in spring as soon as the ground isn’t frozen and you can actually work with the soil. Usually, that’s four to six weeks before you’re expecting the last frost. They’ll be ‘sleeping’ when they get to you and can handle cold earth, even a little frost, without being hurt. Planting them early means their roots have as long as possible to get settled before the hot summer. If you live somewhere with pretty mild winters (zones 7 to 10 in the USDA system) you can also plant bare root strawberries in the fall. This gives them the whole winter to grow roots in preparation for their first harvest in spring.

 

Preparing the Plants and the Soil

As soon as your bare root plants get to you, get them out of their packaging and put the roots into water that’s room temperature for one or two hours, so they can get moisture back. If any of the roots are really dry, are black, or are falling apart, cut those off with clean scissors. Where you’re going to plant them should get at least six, possibly eight, hours of sunshine a day and the soil needs to drain well, and have compost mixed in. Strawberries like soil that’s a little acidic, being in the 5.5 to 6.8 pH range. In fact, strawberries do really well in raised beds as they offer the good drainage these plants need.

The Critical Detail: Getting Planting Depth Right

Getting the depth right is the biggest thing for bare root strawberries to thrive, and it’s what beginners get wrong most often. Every bare root plant has a crown, the point where the roots attach to the stems of the leaves. This crown absolutely needs to be at the soil surface. It shouldn’t be covered by the soil, or it will rot, and it shouldn’t be sticking up above the soil, or the roots will become dry and the plant will die. You plant correctly by digging a hole that’s wide enough to let you spread the roots out in a sort of fan. Then make a little hill of soil in the bottom of the hole, lay the roots over the hill, and fill the hole with dirt up to the very bottom of the crown. After that, push the soil around the roots to make it solid and give the plant water right away, to help the soil settle and remove any air bubbles.

 

First-Season Management for Stronger Plants

If you’re growing June bearing strawberries, most strawberry growers say to get rid of all the blossoms the first year. You won’t get any strawberries the first year by doing this, but the plant will use all its strength to grow a good root system and a strong crown, and you’ll get a much bigger harvest in later years. Everbearing and day-neutral kinds of strawberries can produce fruit after you’ve taken off the first flowers that appear during the first six to eight weeks. After planting, putting a two or three inch layer of straw around the plants will hold in the water, stop weeds from growing, and keep the strawberries from getting dirty as they grow. And to get them going, they need regular water, about an inch a week, and especially during the first six weeks after planting, since that’s when the roots are doing the most growing.

Key Takeaway

If you want a lot of strawberries without spending a lot of money, bare root plants are the way to go to get a patch growing. Three things are really important for them to do well. You’ll want to get them in the ground early in the spring, while they’re still asleep, and the top of the root and stem (the crown) needs to be exactly at the soil surface, not too high and not too low. Also, with June-bearing kinds, pinch off the first flowers that show up. This lets the roots get stronger. If you get them going correctly, a bare root strawberry patch will give you loads of fruit for three to five years before you need to do a big tidy up and start over.

All vegetable gardens require nitrogen, because it’s the nutrient that most directly causes plants to grow lots of green leaves and to be generally healthy. Buying and using nitrogen fertilizer every year costs a lot, and over the long term, chemically made nitrogen fertilizer can harm the life in your soil. Luckily, for millions of years nature has made its own nitrogen fertilizer, through an amazing relationship between plants in the legume family and certain soil bacteria, known as rhizobia. If gardeners can grasp how this natural system works, they have a good way to keep their soil productive without having to buy anything for it.

The Science Behind Biological Nitrogen Fixation

Peas, beans, lentils, clover, alfalfa, and soybeans are all legumes and they do something really special that most other plants in the garden can’t. The roots of these plants create a mutually helpful partnership with rhizobia bacteria which are generally already in the soil. The bacteria settle on the plant roots and make little growths (you’ll see them as pink or white lumps on the outside of the roots) and inside these growths they transform nitrogen from the air into ammonia, a type of nitrogen the plant can actually take up and use to get bigger. The plant, for its part, gives the bacteria sugars it makes during photosynthesis. It’s a win for both of them, and that’s why scientists call this a mutualism.

 

How Much Nitrogen Do Legumes Actually Add

How much nitrogen plants pull from the air and ‘fix’ in the ground is very different depending on the kind of plant, the soil they’re in, and how long they grow. Experts who study farming think garden peas usually fix about 50 to 80 pounds of nitrogen for each acre during the time they are growing, and clover grown as a ground cover can fix 75 to 200 pounds per acre each year. For those of us gardening at home, this means that growing peas or beans in a raised bed and then cutting them off at the soil line (instead of yanking the whole plant out) leaves the little nitrogen-holding lumps on their roots to break down and provide that nitrogen to the next plants. Doing this can mean you don’t have to add as much, or even any, extra nitrogen fertilizer to beds where you grow beans or peas every two or three years.

Using Legumes as Cover Crops

If you want to use natural processes to get more nitrogen into your soil and improve it, planting legumes as a cover crop is the best method. You can plant crimson clover, winter peas, hairy vetch, fava beans or other similar plants in your garden bed when it’s empty in autumn or early spring. Let them grow for some weeks or months and then chop them and dig them into the soil before you plant your vegetables. As this plant material breaks down, it releases nitrogen slowly, giving the next crop a feed all the time it is growing. Lots of organic farmers do this, and it works very well in a home garden, no matter how big or small the plot is.

Common Misconceptions About Legume Nitrogen

Lots of people think beans and peas (which are legumes) give off nitrogen to the soil around them as they grow. But that’s not how it works. Most of the nitrogen they ‘fix’ from the air stays inside the plant in the little lumps on the roots, the stems, and the leaves while it’s actually growing. Other plants can’t use that nitrogen until the legume plant is gone, or has been chopped up and has started to rot. So, planting beans alongside tomatoes won’t give the tomatoes a big surge of nitrogen this season. The good stuff for the tomatoes happens later, after the old bean plant has broken down and become part of the soil.

 

Key Takeaway

Peas, beans, clover, and vetch all have a special relationship with bacteria in the ground. These bacteria transform nitrogen from the air into a kind of plant food the plants can actually use. Because of this, they can add a good amount of nitrogen to your garden’s soil and you might not have to buy fertilizer, or at least won’t need to use as much. To get the benefit, you need to cut the legume plants off at the soil surface and let the roots break down in the ground. This releases the nitrogen they’ve collected, to feed whatever you plant next. The best way for a home gardener to use this natural way of improving the fertility of the soil is to plant legumes as a “cover crop” when you aren’t using the garden for anything else.

How far apart you plant your strawberries doesn’t seem hugely important, but studies on farms have repeatedly demonstrated that it’s one of the biggest things influencing how big your berries get, how much fruit you harvest, and how well your plants do. If they’re too close together, the plants will battle for sun, water and food, making for smaller berries and a damp, packed environment where fungus is likely to flourish. However, leaving too much room between plants means you’re losing good area in your garden that could have been growing more strawberries. Exactly the right spacing depends on what variety of strawberry you’re growing, and how you’ve decided to plant them.

Spacing for the Matted Row System

The matted row is the oldest and most common way to grow June-bearing strawberries. Mother plants are put in the ground 18 to 24 inches from each other, and the rows themselves are three or four feet apart. Throughout the year, the mother plants grow long, spreading stems (called runners) and new plants develop at the end of each one. These new plants root right where they are, and eventually the whole row fills with a thick, 18 inch wide tangle of plants. The spaces between the rows are kept open to allow easy picking and for air to move around. You don’t have to do a lot to this system and you get a huge amount of strawberries overall, although each berry might be a little smaller than if you planted them in a more carefully managed way.

 

Spacing for the Hill System

With the hill or mound method, getting huge berries is more important than having a lot of stems. Plants are spaced 12 to 15 inches apart in every direction, and within a raised bed, you’ll often find them in two or even three lines, shifted so they aren’t directly in front of each other. All those stems (runners) are taken off as they start to grow. This makes the plant put all its strength into the main plant itself and into making fruit, not into making more plants. You’ll get exceptionally large berries using this, and it’s especially good for raised beds, pots, or if you don’t have a lot of room. But be warned, it’s more work than a matted row system because you have to keep taking off those runners all during the growing months.

Spacing for Everbearing and Day-Neutral Varietie

Unlike June-bearing strawberries that give you a big crop all at once, everbearing and day-neutral strawberries keep making fruit all season long. These types do really well when grown in a “hill” system with plants 8 to 12 inches apart. They don’t make as many runners as June-bearing types, and are actually quite happy with being closer together and having those runners taken off. Because they’re always making berries, the energy they’d have used for runners instead goes straight into growing the berries themselves. This often gives you a regular harvest from late spring and all the way into early fall.

Spacing in Containers and Raised Beds

However you’re growing your strawberries – in pots, window boxes, or little raised beds – give each plant between eight and twelve inches of space; this applies to all different kinds of strawberries. If you’re using hanging baskets or strawberry towers, you can get away with plants being only six to eight inches apart. Because these grow downwards and get air all around them, they don’t mind being closer together. Strawberries in containers do best when you cut most of the long stems (runners) off to keep the main plant strong. But, letting one or two of those runners hang down over the side of a hanging basket looks lovely as they trail.

 

Key Takeaway

How far apart you plant your strawberries varies depending on what kind of strawberry you have and how you’re growing them. If you have June-bearing plants in a matted row, give them 18 to 24 inches of space between each plant and 3 to 4 feet between each row. For the hill system, where you take off all the runners to encourage extra large berries, plants should be 12 to 15 inches apart. And everbearing and strawberries grown in containers do best with 8 to 12 inches between each one. Getting the spacing right is important because it allows air to flow around the plants, helps to prevent diseases, and leads to much bigger and better fruit.

Each fall, people who own homes collect millions of tons of leaves and get rid of them, and in doing so they’re unknowingly getting rid of something really good for your garden. Leaf mold is what you get when leaves slowly break down; it’s dark and falls apart into little pieces and gardeners who have been doing this a while really like it because it makes the soil better, helps it hold onto water, and is a good home for things in the soil that are helpful. It isn’t like regular compost, with its need for carefully mixing ‘green’ and ‘brown’ bits and a lot of stirring. Essentially, to make leaf mold you just get the leaves in a pile, keep them contained, and be patient.

What Leaf Mold Does for Garden Soil

Leaf mold is best thought of as something to improve your soil with, not really as a plant food. It doesn’t have a ton of nutrients when you compare it to good compost, but what it does do to the soil itself is amazing. University of California and other extension service testing has found that leaf mold can allow soil to hold fifty percent or even more extra water. That’s really helpful for sandy soil which loses water so rapidly. And in heavy clay, which tends to get waterlogged, it’s leaf mold’s ability to create space between the bits of clay that improves both how air gets to the roots and how well the water drains. Importantly, earthworms, good fungi, and lots of other creatures in the soil eat leaf mold and these are the things that build healthy, stable soil over time.

 

The Bag Method: The Simplest Approach

If you want to make leaf mold quickly and without taking up a lot of room, using black garbage bags is the best way to go. Collect the leaves from the ground, and if you can, run them over with a lawnmower first. This makes them break down more rapidly. Then, firmly pack the leaves into large black plastic bags. If the leaves are very dry, pour a couple of cups of water into each bag, and seal the bag up. But, don’t completely block the air – poke a few little holes in the sides for ventilation. Place the sealed bags somewhere you won’t have to move them for twelve to eighteen months. After that time, when you open the bag, the dry, crispy leaves will have turned into dark, crumbly leaf mold. It will smell lovely and like the ground in a forest.

The Wire Bin Method: Larger Quantities

If you have a lot of leaves to deal with, you can easily make a container for composting with a four-foot section of wire fencing. Bend the fencing into a round cylinder and use zip ties to hold the shape. Then, just heap the leaves into the cylinder and if they’re dry, give them a sprinkling of water. After that you just leave them to rot. Because it’s open to the air, rain will generally keep the pile damp, but if it doesn’t rain for a while you can add water to help it decompose more quickly. These wire containers will hold an awful lot of leaves – fifteen, perhaps twenty bags worth – and will give you a big amount of lovely, finished leaf mould. However, they take much longer to work, usually from a year and a half to two years, because it doesn’t get as hot inside as when leaves are in a sealed bag.

How to Speed Up the Process

If you want leaf mold to happen quickly, chopping up the leaves first is the very best thing you can do. Leaves that are whole will take two years, or even longer, to fall apart. However, shredded leaves can be ready in six to nine months. Going over a heap of leaves many times with a lawnmower, or with a leaf shredder designed for the job, breaks them down into smaller bits. This is because the fungi and bacteria that do the decomposing can get at a much larger area. You’ll also get quicker breakdown if you keep the leaf pile regularly moist (so it’s damp, but not sitting in water) and give it a turn every few months. But it will still work if you don’t do these things, they just speed it up.

 

Key Takeaway

Gardeners can really benefit from leaf mold, and it’s unbelievably easy to get. If you chop up leaves before putting them in bags or a container, they’ll break down about twice as quickly. Once it’s finished, leaf mold is fantastic for holding onto water in sandy soil, for lightening up thick clay, and for providing food to the life in the soil that helps your garden grow, consistently. Every fall, beginning a new pile means you’ll always have a source of soil improver for nothing.

When summer gets really hot, going over 90 and even 100 degrees in lots of places, plants in the garden get a lot of heat problems. These heat-related problems can sometimes look similar to other issues, like those explained in why houseplant leaves turn yellow when plants are under stress. These aren’t always obvious even to people who have been gardening for a long time. The heat has an effect on plants’ cells, messing up how they make food (photosynthesis), breathe (respiration), and make things like flowers and fruit. This causes things to happen that you can see, like drooping, leaves getting brown and crispy, strangely shaped fruit, or a whole crop dying. Knowing how the heat is actually hurting plants means gardeners can tell the difference between normal heat damage and something else more serious, and do something about it to save as much as possible when the weather is terribly hot.

1. Blossom Drop: When Flowers Fall Without Setting Fruit

When temperatures are regularly over 90 to 95 degrees during the day, and don’t go below 75 at night, tomato, pepper, bean and squash plants will lose their flowers. The heat makes the pollen not work well, and also stops the actual pollination from happening. Because of this, the plant gets rid of the flowers instead of using energy to grow fruit which wouldn’t be good. This is a really typical and annoying problem for people with gardens, as the plants can look perfectly fine, yet won’t make any fruit for a few weeks in hot weather. Luckily, this flower dropping usually stops by itself when the temperature becomes more reasonable.

 

2. Sunscald on Fruits and Vegetables

When fruit is in strong, direct sunlight, it can get sunscald. This shows up as pale, thin spots on tomatoes, peppers, squash, and similar plants which will eventually form bubbles and then decay. It happens most of the time if you’ve removed a lot of leaves or if the fruit hasn’t had much sun then gets a lot all at once. You can protect easily damaged fruit during the hottest part of the day with shade cloth that blocks 30 to 50 percent of the sun, and it won’t lower the amount of light the plants get to a dangerous extent.

Direct sunlight can damage fruits, causing pale patches and decay. Using shade cloth helps protect plants, similar to how controlled watering with a drip irrigation system reduces stress.

3. Leaf Scorch and Tip Burn

When leaf edges turn brown and get crispy, people often think the plant isn’t getting enough food, but this is usually because the plant is losing water to the heat faster than the roots can get it more. Lettuce, beans, hydrangeas, and lots of houseplants are prone to this. For plants that are already doing well, this isn’t actually harming the plant itself, though if a lot of the leaves get badly burned (scorched) it can lower the amount of energy they make from sunlight, slowing their growth and reducing the amount of produce you’d get.

4. Premature Bolting in Cool-Season Crops

As we’ve gone over before in this series, lettuce, spinach, cilantro, radishes and many other vegetables that like cool weather quickly “bolt” when it gets hot. Basically, instead of growing the leaves or roots we actually eat, the plants will rush to make flowers and seeds. This is how they survive – they try to reproduce before the heat kills them! The best ways to stop this happening from the heat are to plant things in stages (succession planting) or to give them shade in the afternoon. Cool-season crops like lettuce and spinach quickly bolt in heat. This behavior is explained further in why vegetables bolt and how to manage it.

 

5. Fruit Cracking and Splitting

Tomatoes split easily when the weather is hot, and they’ve been fairly dry for a while, then get a lot of water all at once from a big rain or a good soaking with the watering can. Because the water rushes in quickly, the fruit gets bigger too quickly for its skin to keep up, and this makes cracks that go from the center out or form circles. The best way to stop this is to water them steadily and evenly, and to use a nice thick layer of mulch to keep the amount of moisture in the soil from changing so much.

6. Poor Seed Germination in Hot Soil

Many common vegetables like lettuce, spinach, and carrots won’t start to grow if the ground is hotter than 85 or 90 degrees. In fact, when the soil gets over 80 degrees, lettuce actually goes into a kind of ‘heat sleep’ (thermodormancy) and the seeds won’t sprout, no matter how much water or sunshine they get. If you are trying to plant seeds directly in the garden during the really hot part of summer, you could get them going inside somewhere cool first, then carefully move the little seedlings. Or, a simpler option is to just hold off on planting until the weather cools down in early autumn.

7. Increased Pest and Disease Pressure

When plants are really struggling with the heat, they get attacked by bugs and catch illnesses more easily – their own ways of protecting themselves just aren’t working as well. Spider mites are especially happy in hot, dry weather and can destroy plants that are already weak unbelievably quickly. And powdery mildew, as well as other fungal diseases, get much worse in hot weather; warm nights and the moisture of morning dew on leaves are what they need to really spread. Looking at your plants often during a heat wave, and dealing with any pests as soon as you notice them, will stop little problems with bugs from turning into much larger, more difficult ones.

Key Takeaway

When it gets really, really hot in the summer, garden plants have all sorts of particular troubles. These include flowers falling off, sunburnt patches on the plant, plants going to seed too early, and being more easily bothered by bugs. You can usually deal with these things by using shade cloth, watering steadily, covering the soil around plants with mulch, and planting at times that won’t be during the peak of the heat. It’s important to realize if the problem is from the heat (and not a sickness or missing food for the plant), so you can do something about it correctly and not do treatments you don’t need.

Aphids are a really frequent and annoying problem for home gardeners. These tiny pests damage plants by sucking sap and spreading disease, similar to plant health issues explained in Why Houseplant Leaves Turn Yellow, when plants are under stress. You’ll find these little, squishy bugs in groups on the backs of leaves and on new, soft shoots, where they suck the juices out of plants and can even spread viruses from one plant to another. One aphid can have loads of babies without a male, so a few can quickly become a huge issue in just a week when it’s warm. Luckily, they’re also some of the easiest pests to get rid of without using artificial insecticides, as long as you deal with them quickly and know about all the natural ways to control them.

Start With a Strong Blast of Water

You can get rid of aphids very easily and quickly by strongly spraying the plants they’re on with water from a hose. Early action is key, just like preventing damping off disease before it spreads. The water knocks the aphids off, and most of them on the ground won’t manage to crawl back onto the leaves. This is most successful when you first notice the aphids, before there are loads of them. A blast of water every couple of days for a week, so two to three days between each one, will usually get rid of a small or average aphid issue completely, and you won’t need anything else to help.

 

Homemade Insecticidal Soap Spray

If you’ve got a lot of bugs and they’re really staying, insecticidal soap is a really good, and not very poisonous, natural way to get rid of them. You can make your own: just mix one to two tablespoons of pure liquid castile soap (don’t use dish soap, it’s too harsh on plants!) with a quart of water in a spray bottle. For it to be effective, the soapy water has to actually touch the aphids, because it breaks down the protective wax on their bodies, and they dry out and die quickly. You should spray early in the morning or late in the day to stop the wet leaves from burning in the sun. And importantly, you need to spray the underside of the leaves, as that’s where the aphids are usually found in the biggest numbers.

Attracting Natural Predators

If you want to get rid of aphids for good, the best thing to do is create a garden environment that welcomes their natural enemies. Ladybugs, lacewings, hoverflies, parasitic wasps, soldier beetles are all very hungry for aphids. Planting herbs and flowers with lots of little blooms like dill, fennel, yarrow, sweet alyssum, cilantro, and calendula alongside your vegetables gives the good bugs the nectar and pollen they need to live and come back for more. Lots of different flowers being open at the same time in a varied garden will naturally keep a good number of these predators around, and they’ll control the aphids without you having to do anything!

When Aphids Become a Serious Problem

You can usually deal with aphids using the ways I’ve already mentioned, but sometimes you’ll have to be a lot stronger in your approach. Plants which are seriously covered in aphids and are looking rather poorly (their leaves will be curled, yellowed, or not growing properly) probably need neem oil. This is because neem oil both kills aphids and keeps them away. It’s good for organic gardens, and it’ll work on aphids if you give every single part of the leaf a good coating, and then repeat this every seven to ten days until the number of aphids is down. If one plant has a truly huge number of aphids and is likely to spread them to all your other plants, the best thing to do might be to get rid of the whole thing.

For severe infestations, neem oil is an effective organic option. It kills and repels aphids when applied properly. Maintaining plant health through proper watering methods like drip irrigation systems can also reduce pest problems.

 

Key Takeaway

You can usually get rid of aphids without using man-made pesticides, but you need to start right away. A good, forceful spray of water will get rid of a lot of them if you don’t have many. If there’s a middling amount, insecticidal soap (the kind from castile soap) is effective. Ladybugs, lacewings and other insects that eat aphids can be encouraged to come to your garden by planting certain flowers; this gives you a way for things to balance themselves and stop a lot of aphids from appearing later. For when the aphid situation is really bad, neem oil is an organic solution. Essentially, find them and deal with them before the number of aphids gets huge.