Time for Veggies

It’s time to start seeds for cool-season crops. By mid-month, seeds can be started in flats or peat pots to put in the ground by fall. Keep them in semi-shade. Good candidates are celery and all members of the cabbage family, including broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and brussel sprouts. Home-grown transplants will be ready to put out in the garden in late September or October. If you need only a few it’s much less trouble to buy transplants at the nursery. Come in and see all the varieties you can plant from seed and ask about our large selection of transplants we get in throughout fall.

Control corn earworm. If your corn is badly attacked by corn earworm now and you’re not an organic gardener, try dusting the silks with Sevin. (Treat when the silks first emerge and continue to treat every three to five days until the silks turn brown.) Mineral oil on the silk has been tried with varying success by organic gardeners. If your corn is being rendered inedible by these pest, it could be that you are waiting too long to harvest the corn.

Continue to harvest, and take stock for next year. This is the time of year when people who love to can and freeze are happily stashing away jars and bags of produce for winter use, and those of us who don’t are giving away armloads of vegetables and perhaps vowing to plant less next year. By now, first-time gardeners have learned that you don’t need a whole row of zucchini to feed a family of four- three plants are plenty, but you never can plant enough corn- it goes fast.