A garden, like the rest of life, has joys and frustrations. In this column, I’m airing some of my opinions about the best and worst of these. Keep in mind that these are solely my point of view, not Washington State University’s or anyone else’s.
Homegrown strawberries are at the top of the list of what I like about my July garden. I’m picking enough for my cereal and then some. Since I grow the day-neutral cultivar, Tristar, they will continue to produce until frost.
Raspberries are my least favorite small fruit right now. The new canes look great, but many of last year’s canes, which should be bearing fruit now, are drying up. This is a classic sign of root rot caused by poor drainage. Building them a new raised bed is on my to-do list.
My shelling peas are wonderful and bearing like crazy. I’m eating snow peas several times a week, while they are in season. I have tried freezing them, but they lose their crunch and just aren’t nearly as good.
Like master gardener Ciscoe Morris, I love Brussels sprouts, but hate how long they take to produce. They have been growing for months but won’t be ready until fall. In the meantime, they take up a big chunk of garden real estate.
I am enjoying the flowers that have self-sown around my flower garden. Godetia is one of my favorites, and larkspur is putting on quite a show right now. Poached egg flower (Limnanthes douglasii) is a little, yellow and white, native annual. I reintroduced it to my garden this year and hope it reseeds freely, as it has in the past.
Self-sowing can be a bad thing. I once let fennel set seed and regretted it for years. The seedlings have taproots and are not easy to dig out. Right now I am fighting Anchusa azurea, a perennial with forget-me-not-like blue flowers. The seedlings send tough taproots straight to China and grow right back, if you don’t get most of the root.
Weeds are the bane of gardens. I fight horsetail, morning glory and quack grass. Control takes work, determination and persistence. My neighbor has a patch of pretty wild flax with China blue flowers. The only weed I have that I like is lamb’s quarters. If it is where I can let it grow, it is delicious when used like its cousin, spinach.
I have more beneficial insects than pest ones. I enjoy my lady beetles, lacewings, syrphid flies, rove beetles and other insect friends, and appreciate their help controlling the populations of my insect enemies. I sure wish the kind of ground beetles that eat slugs would take up residence in my garden.
With our wet spring, slugs are my biggest pest problem. The garden at our weekend place doesn’t have nearly the problem due, I believe, to the many garter snakes I see there. I’ve started putting copper strips around my wood-framed beds to keep the slugs out. The rest of the beds will get copper, as soon as I have time.
I want to thank whoever invented floating row cover material. This thin white fabric is used to cover vegetable seeds and transplants. It traps heat to encourage growth and early production of many crops. It also screens out many pest insects, so you get worm-free carrots and radishes with no pesticides.
The worst garden product idea I’ve seen recently is mulch made of ground up tires. This stuff has been used for years in children’s playgrounds and is terrific for that application. Now it is being marketed as garden mulch that doesn’t break down. That quality is exactly what makes me shudder. It’s like intentionally adding rocks to your soil. If you want to use inorganic mulch, try one of the geo-textile weed barriers with some bark or wood chips on top. You (or your house’s next owners) will have a much easier project if you ever want to remove it.
Holly Kennell is the Snohomish County extension agent for Washington State University Cooperative Extension. Master gardeners answer questions on weekdays at WSU Cooperative Extension – Snohomish County, 600 128th St. SE, Everett, WA 98208. Call 425-338-2400.
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