As May turns into June, we have the opportunity to start plants that might hesitate in lukewarm temperatures but are so quick to surge ahead on hot days that we don’t doubt crops will result.
Zucchinis are like this. In the open garden, seed emerges fastest on hills of soil. The bush zucchinis grow nicely there as well as in large containers where slug protection is easier with copper mesh or tape than in the open garden.
Also in pots, it’s easier to move zucchinis into a warm sunny spot. If you keep picking, production goes on until frost.
It’s time now to plant snap beans like the popular Blue Lake or Gold Rush, or both green and yellow types for colourful salads. The purple-pod ones like Royal Burgundy are pretty when growing but the pods turn green when cooked.
If you haven’t started potatoes yet, now is the time if you still hope to get a crop before blight hits. If it does, it’s best to remove the infested top growth immediately. Then, if you need to leave the potatoes in the ground a little longer, you can. Minus the infected tops, many tubers won’t be blighty.
The other pesky potato problem is green tubers. These should not be eaten because green skin indicates presence of a toxin. This can be prevented if you mulch potato plants with five to seven centimetres of soil when the plants are half-grown. It’s tempting to substitute grass mulch but this dries and shrinks, leaving gaps that expose the shallow tubers.
It’s too late to start pepper seed, but transplants are a perfect choice for containers that can be placed in the sunshine. Hot peppers, especially the Jalapeno type, are resilient to adversity and enormously productive. But all pepper plants are pretty as well as useful, especially when fruits slowly ripen and go through various colours.
Tomato transplants are another superb choice for containers against a sunny south or west wall — and especially under a roof overhang where tomato blight can be kept at bay. In a pot, tomatoes need rich soil and lots of water.
In buying transplants, it’s important to check whether they’re intermediate or determinate kinds. Determinate ones have one stem and produce tomatoes tidily on the flower cluster at the top.
Intermediates produce suckers between the main stem and the leaf nodes. It’s important to remove all suckers except the first two or three. These are the only ones with a reasonable chance of producing ripe tomatoes.
Anne Marrison is happy to answer garden questions. Send them to her via [email protected].
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