foodscout blog

I was told when I put in my garden to check it every single day for damaging insects and slugs. I enjoy my morning (and afternoon) visits to my garden so much that it was never a problem to follow through on that. But with these crazy rain storms we’ve been having here in Western North Carolina, I went more than 2 days without checking in on it.

What I found was my young dinosaur kale ravaged by cabbage worms. Cabbage worms are a moth larvae that love kale, which is a member of the same family as cabbage. They are almost the same exact color as young leafy greens so you have to really look to see them. I found more than a dozen happily eating away all of the new leaves, leaving only green stalks sticking up.

But all is not lost. I removed them. The next day I went back out and removed a dozen more. The third day there were only a couple, which is pretty normal.

New leaves are growing in and I will have beautiful kale soon enough. I will not neglect my garden again; come rain, hail, sleet, or snow.

My chard was also attacked, but by slugs. The chard is so large and strong already that the slugs didn’t do much damage. I removed them to what I call “slughaven”. I can’t help it – I’m sentimental about slugs for some reason. I can’t bear to cause them harm.

There’s been a lot of news lately about late blight hitting tomato crops in the north east. Sadly, the same has happened here in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where temperatures are a little cooler than most of the Southeast.

We planted our tomatoes late so we never managed to get a single edible fruit before late blight hit our tomato plants. Several beautiful large green tomatoes were forming and we were so looking forward to watching them to turn red.

At first, I noticed the leaves on certain branches were wilting and turning brown. I diligently cut them off and assumed the rest of the plant was fine. But then a new group of leaves did the same, and it continued that way just about every day. When the tomatoes started forming brown rotten-looking spots on them and literally molded while still on the vine, I figured something was seriously wrong.

It didn’t take much research to discover that my tomatoes fell prey to late blight. I tried to save the plants but I had to finally pull them out this morning. So few branches were even left and there was no way they were going to recover. I’ll try again for fresh tomatoes next year.

A new website called Veggie Trader is now available for any zipcode in the U.S., provided all you gardeners sign up and participate. Veggie Trader allows you to barter your back yard garden produce with your neighbors. Wondering what to do with all those tomatoes? Maybe your neighbor wants some. Make a few bucks on the side or trade for some peppers or squash or whatever you are lacking.

Our foodscout garden has provided us with some tasty veggies, but not yet enough to have excess. We’ve signed up our foodscout garden anyway though.

Veggie Trader is just getting started. Help get it going and thousands of others will be sure to join in.

We got our garden started pretty late in the season, but we figured we would try for some summer squash anyway. And we got a good dozen or so fruits off of it which were all delicious.

Suddenly, the squashes started rotting on the plant and then I noticed little holes had been bored into each one. My squash plants were all infested with pickleworms, which are the larvae of a type of moth that is common in the southeast.

From the North Carolina State University website: The pickleworm is the most destructive insect pest of cucumbers, summer squash and cantaloupes in North Carolina. For many years, it was unprofitable to grow cucumbers in mid or late season because of this pest.

Aside from the recommendation for pesticide use, their page is full of great information for a new gardener. After learning more, I realize I should have kept the squash plants in the garden to protect the cucumbers that are starting to produce fruit. From the NCSU webpage: Although cucumbers are severly damaged some years, squash appears to be the preferred and favorite host. Squash flowers, furit and small plants become heavily infested while adjacent cucumber flowers and fruit may remain clean.

We’ve been drinking a green smoothie every day for years. We love eating a light dinner and we love how refreshing and nutritious they are. This weekend, though, we had a green smoothie experience like no other. We made our smoothie with chard leaves, fresh from the garden. The difference is difficult to put into words.

It tasted cooler and lighter somehow. It filled us up far quicker than usual. We normally have about 24 ounces each and it fills us nicely. With this smoothie, I drank less than a glass full (16 ounces) and I was already completely satiated. I have read that our body feels full sooner if our food has more nutritional content. I have also read that food loses nutritional value steadily after it’s been picked. Imagine what 2-5 days of transit and sitting on grocery store shelves does to our produce as compared with organic chard picked 10 minutes prior to eating.

Finally, and this is much more difficult to describe, the smoothie seemed to have an unusual and powerful energy about it. It was like the inside of my mouth was vibrating – while I was drinking and for about 30 minutes afterward. It tasted delicious but I found the green smoothie very difficult to drink because the feeling was almost uncomfortable.

There was no mistaking it. We didn’t make this green smoothie any differently than how we normally do. But it was absolutely different. It makes me wonder how much we have lost by replacing truly fresh foods with the convenience of store-bought produce.

Growing all these little plants from seed, it’s hard not to want each one to be strong and fruitful. But sadly, some do well why others don’t.

We planted 8 cucumber seeds in our garden. 6 Sprouted. Of those, 3 grew up the trellis quickly, while 3 others seemed to stay little and scrawny. Some of their leaves even had brown spots which is likely a fungus.

I kept thinking I could tend to them and help them along with careful watering and extra fertilizer. After a couple of weeks and little progress, I remembered back to my garden expert, Linda, telling me to yank the weak ones.

So I did. Now there is more water and nutrients in the soil for the remaining 3 and they are growing like weeds, so to speak. Many little cucumbers are forming!

Here’s a picture of one of the sad little plants that didn’t make the cut. Taken the same day as the lovely plants growing up the trellis above.

It’s very exciting to see the vegetables starting to form on a plant. But sometimes they arrive earlier than they should. When a plant starts to produce fruit, it puts most of its energy into creating that fruit, rather than into growing and maturing.

Take this red sweet pepper plant, for instance. It was maybe 6-8 inches tall and already this growing pepper was weighing down the plant so that it could barely stay upright and other peppers were not forming at all. Additionally, this tiny little pepper, the size of a small plum, was already turning red, as though it had just about reached its fully size.

So off it came. Now that the pepper is gone, the plant’s precious energy and resources are freed up for growing and eventually producing more and bigger fruit.

It doesn’t get any fresher than going out to your back yard garden and picking your food for lunch. Yesterday we harvested our first vegetables since planting our garden. 4 Beautiful yellow summer squashes were ready to go.

We are so excited about tasting our own home-grown food that we didn’t do too much with fancy recipes.  On the other hand, summer squash is not our favorite food to eat raw because it has a sort of sliminess when you cut it open.

So we enjoyed our squash by slicing it into rounds and steaming them for about 15 minutes. Then we liberally applied nutritional yeast and added a dusting of herbamare (sea salt mixed with herbs). So delicious.

Summer squash from the store is pretty tasty. Summer squash direct from the garden is full of a buttery flavor. Easily the best squash I’ve ever tasted!

At least a couple of dozen more squash vegetables are already forming on our  8 squash plants so we should be enjoying them a few at a time for a while. Next vegetable ready for harvesting will probably be our chard greens.

Garden bed #3 is ready for planting, just in time for some fall greens. We’ve got 2 rows of beets (more for the greens than the roots), 2 rows of red lettuce, and 1 row each of tat sai and collards. They should all be sprouting within 10 days.

We’re saving a little space on the end for whatever else looks good at the garden supply store in the next couple of weeks.

7 Weeks ago we put our first vegetable seeds in the dirt in our 2 raised beds. We’re getting ready to plant a 3rd bed and harvest some of our squash and greens. I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a few things I learned along the way on my first real attempt at vegetable gardening.

1. Fertilize your plants! Plants need water and they also need food. Your local gardening store will have great advice to share with you about what type of fertilizer is best for your area and particular plants. Just sprinkle half a cup or so around each plant and gently mix it into the soil. Our plants were growing very slowly at first. After giving each one some fertilizer, they perked up and started growing much faster.
2. Soapy water kills aphids. Our okra plants were being attacked by aphids. If you see a lot of ants crawling around on a plant, check the underside of the leaf for aphids and their eggs. Ants “herd” aphids in order to eat the nectar they produce. Take some natural dish soap or Dr. Bronner’s Soap, mix a small amount with water, and gently wash the leaves with it. Do this in the morning so they will be dry before the hot sun comes out and definitely dry before nightfall. Works like a charm. Aphids have not returned.
3. Tomato and tomatillo plants need extra support. My beautiful tomatillo plant was growing like crazy. I had it tied to a stake for support, but it quickly grew  well past the string and I did not tie up the long branches. After a big rain storm, both of the 2 main branches fell from their own weight and split right off. The plant is now down to it’s little stumpy stalk and a new leafy little branch is starting again. I noticed that my 2 tomato plants were quite sprawling as well, so I took the opportunity to tie up all the long heavy branches to the stake using garden tape.
4. Shop at your local garden supply store. If you are not already convinced of the benefits of supporting local shops, then consider a purely selfish reason instead. The workers at Lowes and Home Depot don’t know jack about vegetable gardening. Everyone who works at your local garden shop is an expert in exactly what you need for your particular plant in your particular climate. And if one person doesn’t, they can ask the owner of the store who most definitely will.
5. Check on your plants every day. Look for holes in the leaves and pests. Stick your finger in the dirt to see if it’s dry. Check that each plant is growing. Look for fungus. And just generally get to know your plants so that you can recognize when something is wrong.
6. Keep a garden journal. I regularly need to remember when I planted something or which plant was planted where. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’ll remember. Keep a journal and write down when you planted. Draw a diagram of the garden and where the plants are. Make a note of when you watered, what bugs you found on which plants and what you did about it.
7. Get a rain gauge. Or at least do what we did and put an even-bottomed plastic bowl outside. That rain storm might have seemed like an inch of rain, but more often than not in our town, it was maybe 1/10 of an inch. The plants need to be watered deeply to develop strong roots. Just because the top of the dirt is wet, doesn’t mean you don’t need to water.

All these things are simple and inexpensive but they make a world of difference.