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Blanco, Texas : Thyme Traveler : May 2008

The Symptom is Not the Disease
May 4, 2008 12:09

If your plants are puny or infested with bugs, those are signs of a deeper problem you need to remedy, rather than just spraying the fungus or the bug.

For example:

Pill bugs and slugs are symptoms of too much moist, rotten material.
Grasshoppers are a sign it's too dry.
Stink bugs, spittle bugs, and aphids love rank, crowded growth, and often attack plants that
have been over fed or watered.

You also get all of these enemies by taking away all of their natural weed food and believing your garden is 100%
yours to harvest.

Powdery mildew, black spot, and fungi are symptoms of moist, unclean conditions.

Avoid splattering dirt on vegetation when watering.
Wear clean clothes when brushing against your plants, many problems are contagious from your dirty old gloves.
Avoid watering on bright, sunny days because plants aren't stupid and know it's not raining. Your soil need be no moister than a slightly damp sponge.
Water deeply, at least an inch per week, then let the hose alone so the roots go deep instead of feeding on the surface.
Don't touch anything when the leaves are wet.

If your garden is a volunteer veggie jungle like our backyard, your main job will be to thin the thousands of seeds Nature has planted in the space needed for a few. Knowing which companions enjoy each other's company,
take out everything that is crowding its neighbor, leaving one of each companion variety in touching distance.
You'll have to do this at least once a week in spring, sometimes every day if your weeds grow as fast as ours!

For example, about 50 lambs quarters seedlings came up in about 10 square feet. This plant gets 2 or 3 feet wide, and 3 or 6 feet tall when mature, so take out all the big ones and make a mess of greens, then go back in a
few days and yank out all the biggest ones again, and also all the scrawny ones that won't ever be mighty.

Before summer, you should be down to 2 plants in this space, which will more than fill up your garden and your
tummy with yummy spinach substitute, and you'll only have to water it if it never rains at all.

Underneath these giants, there will be an overabundance of weedlings in many varieties. Immediatly pull anything that gets tall and will compete with your lambs quarters. Leave the low growing ground cover stuff, we have lots of dead nettle and chickweed, but keep them judiciously thinned, to avoid overcrowding your "living mulch."

You want it abundant, but not rank and overgrown. All thinnings and prunings can be tossed in the compost, or eaten, or fed to the chickens and goats. Now you are well on your way through spring, ready for a healthy summer garden.

Now, our front garden is more of a traditional layout, with rows of trellised veggies and companion herbs, heavily mulched with leaves. As soon as the mulch starts breaking down, all sorts of weeds come up there, too, but things are kept further apart for ease of harvesting and to promote good air flow on the peppers and tomatoes.
Lambs quarters and tomatoes do NOT like each other, both are too big and greedy to stand too close together. Basil, dill, and marigolds protect my annual crops, with a wide border of perennial herbs and shrubs to attract the butterflies and spice up the cooking.

I love waking up in the morning, dashing out barefoot to grab a handful of whatever for the breakfast omelette. Today we had lambs quarters, lemon balm, and garlic chives scrambled with big brown eggs, with a bit of canned
fruit salad on the side, whole grain toast with butter and strawberry jam, and a big cup of chai. I need another cup, more later......

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