Growth Patterns

Chris Smith, the community coordinator of Sow True Seed—an Asheville-based company that specializes in open-pollinated, heirloom, and organic seeds—answers readers’ gardening questions.

With my vegetable garden, sometimes I feel as though I’m feeding the local wildlife more than my family. I don’t like the idea of spraying chemicals, so what are my options?

As someone who shares your no-spray philosophy, I really feel your frustration. Last year I spent at least 15 minutes every morning squishing yellow Mexican bean beetles, feeling worried about karmic ramifications, and still losing all the leaves on my bean plants. However, bees still frequented the small pink and yellow flowers, pods still grew, and I still had a respectable bean harvest. Also, because this particular bean seemed to be their favorite, my other bean varieties were less affected and produced a good crop.

So, that covers a few options. Hand-picking is a go-to tool for the home gardener. If finger-squishing makes you squeamish, then carrying a bucket of soapy water and knocking the pests into the bucket is a less gruesome control method. Planting a sacrificial crop is another worthy tactic. My Cherokee Trail of Tears beans were hit bad, but their sacrifice allowed my Mountain Rose and Kentucky Wonder beans to thrive. I’ve found these ‘trap’ crops also work well for Brassicas (cauliflower, broccoli, kale, collards, etc.). In my garden, dinosaur kale seems popular amongst the cabbage moths, so a row of that keeps the caterpillars happy, and my cabbage and broccoli survives relatively pest free. 

My favorite tool for no-spray gardening is nature. It’s a battleground out there, but the ecosystem approach to control is beautiful to see. Last year I noticed a few tomato hornworms chewing up my tomatoes. I decided to leave them be and sure enough, within a week or so, parasitic wasps had mummified the poor hornworm. You can help sway the tide of the battle by supporting the good guys. I have ducks to eat my slugs, bluebird boxes for caterpillar control, ladybug eggs to fight the aphids, and host plants for the beneficial bugs (at Sow True Seed we sell a beneficial attractant mix for just this reason).   

I like the idea of growing my own food, but one month of eating zucchini for three meals a day and then no zucchini until next year doesn’t appeal. How do people eat like this? 

Zucchinis are a common criminal for overwhelming the budding gardener. There are two parts to the answer for this question: garden planning and planning to eat.

First, it’s a perfectly normal gardening affliction to plant too much stuff; it’s just too easy and fun to get carried away. I’m not foolish enough to try and persuade you to plant less stuff, but I would encourage you to plant in stages. Most vegetable crops will have peak-production times or relatively narrow harvest windows. If you are able to stagger your planting times, two things will happen: You’ll spread out the peak production and have a more continual harvest, hopefully avoiding being overwhelmed by food. You’ll also extend your overall harvest because as your first crop is dying off, your second, then third crop will be coming in. We call this succession planting and it makes a lot of sense. 

In practice this simply means not planting a whole bed of lettuce; plant one row and then 10 days later plant another row and another 10 days after that. This theory works with a lot of crops. Plant one zucchini, two weeks later another, and so on. You can also get cunning with this idea and increase overall production by using succession planting with different crops. You can plant a row of radish between two rows of carrots. The radish will leaf out and be ready to harvest just as the slower-growing carrots are beginning to fill the space. Plant some kale under your beans as they are nearing the end of production so that once you cut the bean vines down the kale is ready to go.

The other crucial part of the equation is planning to eat. The abundance of a garden can be a blessing and a curse. It is great to eat fresh vegetables throughout the growing season, but things can get a little out of hand. This is where processing and storing comes into play. You can dehydrate, freeze, can, root-cellar, pickle, ferment, and process your excess produce so that you can continue to enjoy your harvest well into the winter and with any luck all the way through until the first ripe tomato of the following season. Yes, it’s a fair amount of work up-front, but eating homegrown pickled cucumbers, your home-ground garlic powder, and home-canned salsa in the middle of winter is a delight that makes it all worthwhile. I’m still enjoying my turmeric-pickled sliced zucchini from last year’s abundance.

Email your gardening questions to ask@sowtrue.com.