Greens go swimming and green onion upgrades

It's pretty amazing to come back from a two-week vacation and see how much everything has grown!!  A huge thanks for my friends who stopped by to water and sample radishes.  You did excellent work!  But of course there is always much to do in the garden, so as soon as my suitcase was in the door I was out in the front doing some surveying.  The tomatoes had to be tied up, the weeds needed a lesson in humility, one giant sunflower seemed to have given up on life, and of course, harvest!

Harvesting is the best work, reaping the bounty of the labour.  I gathered a huge bag full of greens, most of which had bolted in my absence, so I had no choice but to pull the whole plant out.  Lettuce, arugula, pak choi, radishes - most of each crop came out (I need to seed more!).  My mustard greens had grown very big, but no signs of bolting so I just picked a few outer leaves from each plant to add some spiciness to the salad.  I had a nice harvest of snow peas which we tossed into stir fry that evening.  The swiss chard has made a fantastic recovery from the leaf miners (no neem oil was applied, but I did check daily for eggs and maggots before I left), and a few leaves can be harvested.  My 'multiplier green onions' seemed to be living up to their name and had not only grown to almost two feet tall, but the bulbs were expanding away from each other at the surface of the earth.  I cut off the greens just above the surface, then dug up and separated the bulbs and replanted them.  I'm not sure if that's what I'm supposed to do, but we'll see if that experiment works.  I had so many green onion trimmings I offered them to some neighbors in my building and across the street.  One of them offered me a beer in exchange for the fresh shoots.  Not a bad upgrade!

Greens go swimming

When harvesting greens, it's best to do it early in the morning before it gets too hot.  This way the plants haven't started to transpire too much and won't wilt as fast.  Later in the morning and throughout the day the leaves pump are pumping water (transpiring) through them from the roots and out through their pores (stomata).  When the leaves are picked they continue to transpire but their water source has been severed so they become dehydrated and wilt.  However, if you're like me, you won't be one of the first creatures moving about in the garden in the day and you'll find yourself harvesting in the heat.  Not to worry.  Simply bring a bucket of water with you into the garden and dunk the leaves in immediately after picking them.  This will both supply them with water and cool them off so they reduce their transpiration.  Ice water would be great but cool tap water works well too. Or you could just pick your produce and carry it into the kitchen when your done and soak them in the sink.  That works too.  However, it's best not to wait too long from the time of harvest till the leaves go swimming - you don't want the shriveling to go too far!

Leaf Miners Discovered!

Arugula leaf affected by leaf miners (upper leaf) and a healthy leaf (below).

In the past couple of weeks we noticed the swiss chard hasn't been looking great.  The leaves were greying and sections between the veins were limp.  I initially thought the leaves might be getting sunburned, having recently be transplanted, so I tried to ignore it, thinking it would get better over time as the plants adjusted to life outside.

But it didn't get better.  Yesterday I picked off a dying leaf and studied it carefully.  To my horror I saw, between the layers of the leaf itself, a white maggot, leisurely chomping away at the tasty tissue of the chard.  There were three or four of them in that leaf alone.  I tossed the leaf to the ground and raced inside to look up "chard leaf miner" online.  Sure enough, many people are dealing with this problem and have written about it on their own blogs.  Here's a quick summary of what I've learned about the leaf miner:

The little white lump is the maggot inside the leaf.

First off, there are hundreds of different species of leaf miners, all of them pretty specific to plant types or families.  So the chard leaf miner will also be found on spinach and beet leaves, all members of the Chenopodiaceae family (sure enough they had got to some of my beet leaves!).  They are the larvae of flies, moths, or butterflies that lay eggs on the undersides of leaves, often making a small cut in the surface of the leaf.  When the eggs hatch the larvae crawl in and around the leaf feeding on its tissue.  They can crawl down into the stem of the leaf or even the entire plant.  It will go into a pupa stage in or on the leaf then fly away as an adult to mate.  They can reproduce several generations over the course of the summer so they will cause an ongoing problem if not managed.

If you notice the signs immediately remove the affected leaves and put them in the trash or burn them.  DO NOT PUT THEM IN YOUR COMPOST!  They will propagate and perpetuate the problem!  You can also look on the undersides of the leaves for the eggs:  small, white ovals lying parallel to each other not more than 1mm long.  If you spot the eggs simply brush them off.  You should keep a close eye on the plants for the rest of the season.  Several people recommend a weekly spraying of neem oil as an organic treatment.  It's pressed from the seed of the neem tree, so it's a natural product that poses no threat to the environment.  It's also quite safe for humans, and apparently the plant has been used for medicinal purposes in India for thousands of years.  Another suggestion is using row covers around the affected plants to keep the flies off.  Row covers are a very fine mesh that let sun and water in but keep the bugs out.  If these solutions don't work and the bugs become too much of a problem one site suggested pulling up the plants and waiting till September to grow them.  The weather will be cooler which the plants tolerate well but which will kill the bugs.

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Out in the garden today following up on the plants I noticed some of my arugula, kale, and even my mustard greens showed signs of leaf miners.  Because these are members of the cabbage family (Brassicaceae, not the chard/ spinach family) I knew I had another species of leaf miner on my hands.  Fortunately, the damage did not appear to be nearly as extensive as with the chard and I removed the few leaves that were affected.  Hopefully there won't be a problem with them for the rest of the season, however, vigilance is required!  My poor chard was stripped down to just the tiniest leaves at the center of the plants.  Hopefully they will be able to make a comeback over the season.

For more reading, here's the link to a great leaf miner identification site.  It has information on hundreds of leaf miner species with an index listed by the affected plant names.