Bible Street Community Garden’s Health Team recommends a few simple steps before you plant.

1. Remove any weeds. For obvious reasons. Weeds compete with your plants and usually don’t taste as good.

2. Do NOT turn your soil. Turning the soil breaks the soil’s structure and disrupts the microbial processes that are happening down there in the dark that work to feed your plants. If the soil in your bed is compacted, aerate it by using a garden fork to gently lift the soil. Simply push the fork 6-8″ into the soil and lift slightly. This will open up the structure of the soil and allow air, water and nutrients to reach down into your bed. Be sure not to step on your bed!

The Garden has received a load of topsoil mixed with 50% compost and this is a perfect addition to add to the top of your bed. An inch of topsoil is plenty to spread evenly over the top.

3. Add a cover of shredded leaves or seedling hay to mulch your bed and keep it from drying out. When you are ready to plant simply use your trowel to gently move the soil aside and plunk your plant into the space you’ve created. Pat the soil back around the plant to make sure you get good contact between the roots and the soil.

4. Go talk to the other gardeners and find out what they’re planting in their beds and get ideas. Have you started your tomato seedlings yet?

Thankfully, the temperatures have dropped away from the 90s that we had for what felt like a month. But we have had very little rain and that can be a big stressor to plants trying to make fruit.

The good news is that most of us have added compost to our garden beds and that helps the soil retain moisture for plants to grow deep roots. The deeper the roots the healthier the plant.

A good mulch is like wearing a hat against the sun. It helps keep you cool and does the same for the garden bed. It also keeps the moisture in the soil from evaporating away. Use leaves, pine needles, straw or seed straw to dress the soil around your plants. [Look for straw bales to the right of the shed!]

Weed regularly. Weeds steal water and nutrients from your garden plants. Watering deeply every other day is better than watering a little everyday. Deep watering encourages deep roots and keeps the soil cool.

Water early in the day or late in the evening when the sun won’t burn the water off. I had a gardener once who said that when you water in the heat of the day you are basically boiling your plants. Not sure that is exactly true, but I take the point!

Harvest! Less plant or fruit to service means your plants can save energy. Tomatoes can finish ripening on the kitchen counter, safe from marauding chipmunks and give your plants a break. They’ll switch back to their productive selves once the weather cools.

Now is a good time to tidy up around your bed, respecting your neighbors and practicing good hygiene. Take some time to weed, water, mulch and clean and serve the community in community gardening!

I’m making a list of plants for next year that are known for tolerating a little drought: black-eyed peas, okra, horseradish, and Jerusalem artichokes. What’s on your list?

Stake your tomatoes and have them grow vertically. Tomatoes on a staked plant are larger and ripen earlier than those on a sprawling plant. Good air circulation around leaves and fruits of upright plants curbs disease. And fruits held high are free from dirt and slugs and out of reach of those pesky, but adorable chipmunks. Here is a good example from the garden:

Tie the vines to the stake with a piece of cloth to avoid cutting into the stem.

Confine each plant to a single stem by removing all suckers, ideally before any are an inch long. A sucker is a shoot that grows from a bud originating at the juncture of a leaf and the main stem. Go over your plants at least weekly, using your fingers to snap off each side shoot. 

Inspect your plants for pests and remove them, spray with cayenne flavored soapy water when the sun is high to reduce the risk of powdery mildew forming.

Water. Keep your plants moist down to 6 -8 inches in the soil and with this heat you will harvest a bumper crop! Watering slowly at the base of the plant is preferable to watering the whole plant to prevent mildew.

Air-flow management. Remove diseased leaves and discard in trash. Not only will your plants be healthier, but they will get the needed air flow to stay that way.

Mulch will help hold in moisture, reduce weeds and help prevent bacterial and fungal disease.

Weeds take up valuable minerals that your vegetables can use and they can harbor pests and disease that affect your plants. Pull them out and keep your soil covered either by planting thickly or with a fine mulch. It’s like a hat for your soil, keeping the microbes happy and active, holding in moisture and holding the temperature stable — one less thing your plants have to stress over.

Water every day if possible in this heat. Rain has skipped our area over the last couple weeks and plants need water! If you can’t visit every day, spend a good 10-15 minutes soaking the ground to keep your plants happy.

Reap what you’ve sown! The payoff starts now! If you’re growing basil, pinch the leaves back to encourage the plants to bush out and to keep them from flowering — the minute they flower, they will no longer put out leaves.

Not all bugs are bad! Not even the ones that look scary.

This is a ladybug nymph, or juvenile. This 1/2-inch baby ladybug is nothing like the beetle we know and love, but it will eat hundreds of aphids before it pupates into an adult. Ladybugs’ favorite food is aphids, but they also eat other garden pests like whitefly pupa, thrips and spider mites.

Ladybugs also eat pollen. You can encourage them to browse in your garden by planting dill, chives, marigold, cosmos and sweet alyssum.

p.s. It’s getting hot! Don’t forget to water deeply to keep your plants from getting stressed, which makes them more susceptible to pests.