Early gardening tips

The weather has turned off better for the farmers and gardeners, so those who were needing to work their soil might be able to. Many worked their gardens when it was too wet, which really messes up the soil especially when there is some clay in it. I sure appreciate some dry cool days.

Don't forget to get some Bt on your tomato plants and cabbages and other cole crops. Bt, or Bacillus thuringiensis, is a naturally occurring bacterium that messes up the digestive system of caterpillars and worms or bugs like this. It is virtually harmless to pets or humans. The pre-harvest interval or phi for Bt is 0 so you can doctor your tomatoes and pick and eat immediately. It comes in both a powder or a liquid or mixable powder, so you can use either the powder or sprayer.

One product I buy is dipel dust. We eat a fair amount of peanuts that come in plastic jars with screw on lids so I take an empty jar and drill the lid full of 1/4-inch holes and then use it to sprinkle dipel dust on my cabbages and such. I believe the bags of dipel dust are 5-pound bags. I buy a mixable Bt powder to use in my sprayer for our tomato plants. If you spray your cabbage plants, you'll need a spreader sticker so the Bt spray will stick to the cabbage. Powder works better on cabbage or Brussel sprouts.

Check the bottom of your tomatoes for a jet black round spot. This spot usually is a sign of blossom end rot in tomatoes. With all the rain we've been having, I wouldn't be surprised if all the calcium has been leached from the soil, which causes blossom end rot. It might be a good idea to go to your local soil or garden shop and talk to them. There are some products that you can spray on the plant. You can also buy some products you can mix with water and water it in around your tomato plants. One is calcium nitrate. It's a lot easier to treat the tomato plant before symptoms show up than treat the plant which has blossom end rot tomatoes on the plant.

As your tomato plant starts putting on tomatoes be sure to water your tomato plant. Tomato plants that are raising up a crop of tomatoes require a lot of water or as much as two to three quarts daily. This is about a two liter bottle of water daily. Over a week this will figure out to be about 3 to 4 gallons per plant. It's better to not sprinkle your tomato plants but to water them with soaker hoses or drip hoses. Sprinkling your tomato plants or getting the leaves wet tends to spread disease or fungus.

We have noticed a few potato bugs on our potatoes, but not enough to spray them. When I was little, Dad would get us a Folgers coffee can, add a little kerosene and then send us to pick potato bugs. I'm afraid I don't pick potato bugs like this anymore. No more potato bugs than we have, it won't cause a problem.

We noticed our corn is making tassels, so it won't be long before we will have ears of corn forming and silk showing up. When the silk shows up, I usually walk my corn and put a drop of mineral oil on the silk of each ear of corn. This mineral oil will help prevent worms from eating up your ears of corn. I've wondered why you can't spray the corn patch with Bt and accomplish the same thing. I may spray one row and check the results.

We've been picking yellow and dark green zucchini for a couple of weeks now so I started a new set of zucchini plants for later on. I planted a couple dozen yellow zucchini seeds in starter soil, so they should be coming up any day. We have found that the squash bugs begin killing our zucchini plants one plant at a time starting when they begin producing. I could treat with an insecticide but hate to.

I think our egg plants were the first to show signs of bugs eating on the leaves, so I dusted them with seven. Seven is a good general insecticide. When using seven, be sure to check the phi or pre-harvest interval or the days one needs to wait from treatment to being safe to harvest and consume. Since our eggplant haven't started blooming, I wasn't concerned with the phi.

If you grow cucumbers then I'd consider growing them vertically on some type of fence or cattle panel. We use 16-foot-long cattle panels that are about 50 inches tall. Most of the time the cucumber vines will climb right up the cattle panel, but if they don't, I sometimes use a plastic vine clip or tomato clip. They are very inexpensive costing only about $3 for a hundred of them. A thousand costs only $14. When you add a little postage, they are still a bargain. One can then simply clip the cucumber vine to the panel. These same clips work on tomato plants as well. They are only good for one season. The sun breaks them down and makes them brittle.

We like to grow a yellow zucchini squash. We like to peel the hide off the yellow zucchini, slice it into 3/8-inch-thick slices and then put in a cast iron skillet with a little olive oil. Once the down side is coated with olive oil I flip it over and then sprinkle it with some Andy's fish seasoning. Andy's also makes a vegetable seasoning which I also like. Once I've sprinkled the zucchini with Andy's, I go ahead and flip them and sprinkle the other side. We put the Andy's in an old spice bottle with a shaker lid and store it in the freezer. If you have the heat up a bit, it will crisp the slices of zucchini up. This also works on the grill, but you have to wipe the olive oil on the slices. Then enjoy! I probably like to dip zucchini in eggs and cracker crumbs better, but it's a lot more time consuming.

When I was little some 69 years ago, Mom used an old cast iron skillet. She would try some of the marvelous coated new invention skillets, but they flopped. The old cast iron skillet kept right on cooking some marvelous meals. Get a good cast iron skillet and use it. Cook some bacon in it every now and then to keep it seasoned. Contrary to what some say, you can wash the skillet out with a little soap and it won't hurt the seasoning. The key is to use it. Might not hurt to batter up some chicken, melt some lard in the skillet, turn the fire down low and fry the chicken slow. Wish I had a piece right now.