Sprouting Up in Your Garden

Vol. 1, Issue 1, Newsletter

Monday, June 08, 2009         

Farm News:

Well, this has certainly been an unusual spring. I haven’t seen weather this cool and wet in quite some time. We thought it would be warm earlier this year and planted some of our summer veggies way back in February, but Mother Nature fooled us! Instead we are having a late blooming summer season, which means all the summer plants are slow to take off around here. I often get questions about what we have in our garden, so I thought I would take a few pictures (now that we have weeded!) and show you.  Our back run is all strawberries, mostly because my kids can devour a flat of strawberries in a day if I let them, but also because that way we can offer more organic strawberry plants next spring as our current ones produce daughter plants. If you see anything in there that looks like it’s going to seed, that’s because we are letting it so that we can collect the seeds for next year as well. And somewhere in all of that we try to find some space to grow ourselves food and try out new varieties!  It is chaotic but a blast, and we hope to continue enjoying our experiments in gardening for years to come.

In other farm news, we apologize for the lateness of this first newsletter. It is a work-in-progress, and as the school year was wrapping up, this writer got writer's block! It finally passed as there was less and less on my plate, and inspiration struck! If you have anything you wish to see covered, please feel free to send in suggestions to amity@sproutinguporganically.com

Topic of the Week:

PESTS!

Our garden pest of choice this week is the earwig, or as they are known in our family the “pincher bug”(the kids got pinched by one when they were little trying to play with it). I have had lots of questions about this one (and also gophers, but that is another week’s subject), so I did a little digging around the Internet and my book collection. There seem to be two things about earwigs that are consistent and common: 1) they like to hide in damp, cool places, and 2) they like decomposing matter or anything that smells like it (as this is their job on our earth). Believe it or not, a certain amount of earwigs in the garden is not necessarily a bad thing; after all, someone needs to help breakdown the compost pile, and also they will attack slugs. The problem comes when there is a boom in population due to favorable weather, lack of natural predators, or what-have-you.

In that case, I have run across several different trap types for the earwig, some of which might catch other bugs as well, put forth by people with the same issues on posting boards; all of them have had success of one sort or another, so you can pick and choose which one would best apply to you and your garden.

The Beer Trap: Save those tuna or cat food cans (or ask a neighbor) and pour about ½ inch of beer in each can. Sink it into the ground in the shady spots beneath or beside plants so that the rim of the can is level with the dirt. You should have a tin of drunk or dying earwigs in the morning; just dump out and refill each night until you have the earwigs population under control, then you might only need to do once or twice a week.

Variations of the Beer Trap: You might find one or more of these works just as well or better than the beer.

1)       Soy sauce, molasses and water

2)       Posted as “Slug Dough”: 1 Tbs. Molasses, 3 Tbs. Cornmeal, ½ c. flour, ½ c. water, and ½ Tbs. yeast. Let it foam up for a few hours, then spread it out over you tins or cans, about half an inch per can

Of course, there are non-food methods as well such as the damp rolled-up newspaper or corrugated cardboard, though people seem to not be sure what to do with them once they have them. My two cents would be to just toss it in the garden or recycle bin, depending on your trash company.  But my all-time favorite method that I saw posted was the “chicken method”!  More than once people reported that either they would let their chickens loose in the garden to pick away at the bugs; alternately, they would take the newspaper, cardboard, or even hosing containing the earwigs and shake it out in the chicken pen and watch the chickens go nuts over the sudden feast.

One last non-chemical option I have found, though it would definitely require more time and patience than the previous methods, would be to provide habitats for birds or toads as these animals are natural predators of not only earwigs, but a lot of other pesky garden bugs.

I hope this gives you some ideas of things to try in your garden. I know that after finding all this helpful information I will be trying some of these techniques in our garden as well!

Our Favorites:

Our favorite fertilizer would have to be the Earth Juice liquid fertilizer line. It is very smelly until you get used to it, but we have found that our plants absorb it the best when they need that extra little punch. They are concentrated formulas so a small bottle can go a long way, depending on your garden size. We use the Grow, Bloom and Catalyst formulas, and mix it up in a watering can to pour over our garden plants in the evenings; the leaves as well as the roots will suck it up. We stop applying when there is a good deal of food close to harvest size, as we don’t want the residual taste on our food. A good sink wash or a couple days of no-fertilizer-watering will fix that right up.

Recipes:

Polenta-Sausage Bowl

Recipe courtesy of BHG.com

Start to Finish: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 1  16-oz. tube refrigerated polenta with sun-dried tomatoes
• 2 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise
• 1 Tbsp. cooking oil
• 1 lb. bulk Italian sausage
• 1  8-oz. pkg. sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup grape tomatoes
• 1 tsp. dried Italian seasoning, crushed
•   Finely shredded Parmesan cheese

Options: For a vegetarian version, substitute out the Italian sausage for your choice of sautéed tofu.

Directions

1. Preheat broiler. Lightly grease baking sheet. Cut polenta in 12 slices. Place polenta and zucchini on baking sheet. Brush with oil; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Broil 4 to 5 inches from heat for 8 to 10 minutes, until polenta is lightly browned and zucchini is crisp-tender, turning once.

2. Meanwhile, in large skillet cook and break up sausage over medium heat until sausage begins to brown. Drain off fat. Add mushrooms, tomatoes, and seasoning to skillet; cook for 5 minutes, until meat is no longer pink. Slice zucchini crosswise. Spoon sausage mixture and zucchini over polenta. Sprinkle with cheese. Makes 4 servings.

Up and Coming:

As of Monday, June 08, 2009, we will be in the Lassens-Ventura location for at least the rest of the growing season! Look for our plants in the front of the store, and tell your friends!

If there is any questions or subjects you would like us to cover, please email us at amity@sproutinguporganically.com and then look for it in future newsletters!