Tomatoes seem susceptible to as many bacterial, viral and fungal diseases as humans do.  Certainly the most serious is late blight, a fungal disease which has been spreading quickly across the eastern United States for the past two years.  This is the same blight that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-19^th century.

            In 2009, 26 Wisconsin counties reported late blight on tomatoes.  So far this year, five counties scattered throughout the state have reported late blight. 

Most tomato and potato diseases can be avoided by mulching under the plants so that soil-borne bacteria doesn’t splash onto the foliage, and allowing space between plants so that air can freely circulate.  But late blight spores on infected plants are swept up in wind currents high into the atmosphere, where they can be carried up to 40 miles.  The spores survive up there on rainy, humid, overcast days, and then fall into gardens and farm fields when it rains.  There is really no way of preventing the spores from landing on your plants.

            Because late blight is highly contagious and destructive, it is critical that we do our best to prevent the spread.  This means inspecting plants every day as this disease spreads so quickly that it can develop overnight.

Symptoms include leaf lesions beginning as pale green or olive green areas that quickly enlarge to become brown-black, water-soaked, and oily in appearance.  Lesions on leaves produce spores which look like white-gray fuzzy growth on the undersides of the leaves.

Stems can exhibit dark brown to black lesions with spores.  Tomato fruit symptoms begin small, but quickly develop into golden to chocolate brown firm lesions or spots that can appear sunken with distinct rings within them.  You might also see the spores, which appear as white fuzzy growth on the tomatoes themselves.

The time from first infection to lesion development and spore development can be as fast as seven days depending on the weather.  High humidity, dew, wet weather and temperatures from 50 to 80°F encourage late blight.

If you find late blight on your tomatoes or potatoes, pull up and destroy the plants immediately.  Also remove the plants next to the infected plants.  Do not compost the diseased plants.  They should be double-bagged and landfilled. 

Late blight does not survive freezing in winter, but it can survive on plant parts that are kept warm in a compost pile or in storage.  It is very important to buy fresh plants or seed for next year’s tomatoes and potatoes.  Do not allow volunteer tomato plants from dropped seed or potatoes you missed digging up this year to grow next year.   Do not use potatoes you grew this year as seed for next year.

Inform your neighbors if you discover late blight on your tomatoes or potatoes so they can be on the lookout for it in their own gardens.  The only way to prevent an epidemic of late blight is if everyone does proper clean-up and disposal of their plants.

Little red buds are appearing in the rhubarb patch.  It will be another month or more until it is ready for harvest, but now is the time to divide it if you haven’t done so for several years.  Dividing rhubarb keeps it producing well.  If the stalks are getting spindly, it’s time to divide.

      Use a spade to dig all around the crown and then lift it from the soil.  Break the crown into pieces, making sure each piece has one or two buds and a root.  If you cannot identify a bud, just divide it into several good-sized clumps.  Replant the divisions so that the buds are just covered with soil, about the same depth it was before you dug it up. 

      While the rhubarb is out of the ground, take the opportunity to remove weeds and add some rotted manure or other organic fertilizer to the soil. 

      Do not harvest any rhubarb the first year after dividing.  The plants need this year to re-establish themselves.  Harvest lightly the second year, and after the third year, harvest as much as you want, never taking more than half the stalks at a time.  Fertilize after harvest is completed each year.

      To avoid the waiting period, use a sharp spade to slice down the middle of the crown while it is still in the ground and lift just half of the plant.  Continue to harvest from the original plant while the new divisions are establishing themselves.

      All that said, if your rhubarb hasn’t been divided for many years and is prolifically producing good thick stalks, don’t bother dividing it until you have to!

      Rhubarb will grow in just about any kind of soil, but does best in loose, well-drained, fertile soil. 

      To harvest rhubarb, select firm, crisp stalks and gently tug and twist them from the ground.  Cut off the leaf.  Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid and are toxic, so wash your hands after harvesting.

      Store fresh rhubarb stalks, unwashed, in the refrigerator up to two weeks.  Rhubarb can be rinsed, cut into inch-long pieces, and frozen in freezer bags.

      Always remove the thick flower stalks that shoot up from the center of the plant as soon as you see them.  They take energy from the plant that is put to better use in growing the stalks you will harvest.  Some rhubarb cultivars are more likely to produce flower stalks than others, and some produce them some years and not others, depending on soil conditions and weather.

      If you are planting rhubarb for the first time, there are several cultivars to choose from.   If you are buying crowns to plant rather than getting divisions from a friend, read the descriptions to help you decide which one to choose.  Some cultivars are sweeter than others, and colors range from green to pink to red.

      My vegetable garden is a large rectangle running east–west along the northern boundary of our property.  Over the years, the open field north of our fence has grown up into a wooded area.  In mid-summer, even though the woods is north of the garden, it casts quite a bit of shade.  The garden once got 14 hours of sunlight a day but now gets only 6 hours, not enough for good vegetable production.

      After considering several plans for moving the garden to a sunnier spot, I decided to rotate it 90° so that the rectangle runs north-south.  It will be exactly the same size, so it seemed at first a simple matter of lifting about 2/3 of the fence and changing the shape.  Well, the fence doesn’t come out so easy.  I don’t’ know why we thought we needed rebar posts with anchor plates to support a chicken wire fence. 

      While my husband struggled with moving the fence, I laid down large pieces of cardboard from every appliance we had ever bought over the grassy area which is to become garden.  Over the cardboard I spread a thick layer of straw.  The cardboard will kill the grass underneath and in spring the whole area will be tilled.  Meanwhile, I am tossing items which would normally go in the compost into the new garden so they can compost in place and improve the soil.  After I rake in fall I will shred the leaves and spread them over the straw to add even more organic matter.

      The part of the old garden which will become lawn next spring holds three raised beds.  The boards holding the soil in place will be moved to the new area this fall, but some of the plants inside them will have to wait until spring.  There is a yucca plant, the herb lovage, some pretty Asiatic lilies, strawberries and a small blueberry bush.

      I will move the soil from the old raised beds to the new ones and with the soil will come seeds of flax and calendula which will germinate next spring.  There are wood chips surrounding the raised beds, so those will be raked up and moved to the new pathways.

      On the west edge of my current garden are peonies, raspberries and rhubarb.  After the move, these three will be orphaned in the middle of the grass.  The rhubarb can be moved in early spring just before it starts to grow.  June-bearing raspberries are biennial plants, so the ones growing now will produce next year.  The producing plants will stay where they are next summer, but any new plants will be moved to their new location as soon as they sprout up.  After raspberry season, the old plants will be cut down and then that area can be planted in grass.  Peonies should be transplanted in September so they will stay where they are until next fall.

      Moving my garden is a year-long project but eight additional hours of sunlight will be the reward!

      There are few plants that thrive when planted in late autumn, but red, white and black currants do.  The weather is likely to be wetter and there is still enough warmth in the soil to encourage the plants to grow some roots before winter.

      There is a difference in the way the different types of currants are planted.  Red and white currants are planted with a “leg” or stem showing beneath the branches, while black currants are planted lower than they were growing in the nursery, so that all the stems arise directly from the soil.

      How do you choose one color over another?  Here is what Wikipedia says about the tastes of the three colors:  “The tart flavor of red currant fruit is slightly greater than its black currant relative, but with approximate sweetness.  White currants have the same tart flavor but greater sweetness.”

      Red and white currants have nice compact bushes and also can be trained as cordons against a wall or fence.  Black currants are bigger, up to six feet tall.

      All currants produce best when grown in full sun, but black currants will do just fine in light shade.  Do not plant black currants if there are white pine trees anywhere in the vicinity.  White pine blister rust is a disease that attacks both black currants and white pines, and needs both species in close proximity to complete its life cycle.

      Red currants require lots of potassium so they need extra feeding each spring. 
Browning leaf margins indicate a potassium deficiency.  To remedy that, spray the leaves with liquid seaweed.  Black currants need extra nitrogen.  Apply two handfuls of blood, fish and bone meal in early spring.  If growth is poor, give the plants more fertilizer in early summer.

      Pruning is not difficult, but is different for each type of currant.  There isn’t adequate space here for instructions, so consult a good pruning handbook, or ask at the nursery where you buy your plants.

      I’ve not grown black or white currants, but have had a ‘Red Lake’ red currant for many years.  The berries begin ripening in July and I pick the ripe ones each day for a week or so until I have the four cups I need to make my dad a currant pie for his early July birthday.  Later in July and well into August, picking is easier when all the currants are ripe and they can be pulled from the branches by the handful.  Another way to harvest is to cut sprigs from the bush and remove the individual currants from the sprigs with a fork.

      Fresh currants do not store very long, but they can be spread on a cookie sheet and frozen and then placed in freezer bags.  They can also be canned.

      Currants are very high in vitamin C, and are rich in iron, phosphorus, potassium and fiber.  They make delicious pies and jams and are great eaten fresh from the bush.

      One of my favorite fresh vegetables coming out of the garden this time of year is edamame.  It’s a garden soybean, pronounced “eh-duh-mah-may.”  Edamame translates as “beans on branches.” 

      Regular soybeans are allowed to dry on the plants before processing but edamame pods are picked green.  In Japan the pods are popped open and eaten out of hand like we eat peanuts from a shell.  They are often served in bars along with beer.  In fact, the variety that I grow in my own garden is called ‘Beer Friend.’

      In the U.S., edamame pods are most often steamed or boiled for about 10 minutes.  Toss the pods with butter, salt and pepper.  The pods themselves are not very palatable so hold the pod in your fingers, put it into your mouth and slide it back out, using your teeth to squeeze the beans out of the pod.  The taste has been described as lightly sweet and nutty.  They are just as delicious served slightly cooled, at room temperature, or lightly chilled.

      In addition to a snack food and vegetable side dish, edamame is good mixed with other vegetables, stir-fried, added to soups or chili, or in cold salads.

      Besides being so tasty, edamame is a nutritional powerhouse.  Like all soy products, it is high in phytoestrogens, a natural plant estrogen.  A serving of beans from about 35 pods has 125 calories, 12 grams of protein, 13 grams of carbohydrate and 3.5 grams of fat.  They are rich in calcium and phosphorous and a good source of vitamin A.

      Edamame pods can be frozen for future use.  Blanch the pods in boiling water for two minutes; then plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking.  Store the pods in zippered freezer bags.

      Edamame grows just like bush beans.  They need full sun and adapt to most soil types.  In spring, after the soil has warmed to 65°, sow the seeds 3 inches apart and 1 inch deep in rows 18-24 inches apart.  When the plants are 4-6 inches high, add a 3-inch layer of organic mulch around each plant, making sure the mulch doesn’t touch the stems.

      There are several varieties of edamame and their days to maturity vary from 65 to 90 days.  All the pods mature over a period of just a few days, so to provide a continuous supply, make successive sowings every week or two or plant several different varieties.

      The beans are more flavorful if harvested in the evening and the sooner you eat them after harvest, the richer the flavor and the higher the nutritional value.  For peak flavor and nutrition, harvest the pods when they are 80%-90% filled out.  It’s hard to describe exactly what that means, but with a little experience, you’ll know when to pick.

      Pods are harvested by pulling or cutting them off the plant.  Let some pods mature on the plant to provide seeds for next year.

      Have you been experiencing sticker shock every time you go to the grocery store?  Have you ever held off buying lettuce, spinach or tomatoes      because of a scary news story about e-coli or salmonella?  Have you read the articles attributing cancer, hormonal abnormalities and neurological disorders to pesticides and fertilizers?

      If any of these are of concern to you, there is a solution.  Grow your own vegetables this year.  Seven million Americans will be starting their first vegetable garden in 2009 and many people with existing gardens will be enlarging them.

      To get started, decide what you’d like to grow.  Plant what you like to eat fresh and what you might freeze, can or dehydrate.  And then try something new as well.  If you have children, get them involved.  With guidance, they can plant the larger seeds, and water, weed and harvest.  If you have the space, give them their own section of the garden to take care of.  Research shows that children who participate in growing vegetables are much more eager to eat the vegetables they’ve grown than ones that come from a can.

      Start small the first year so that you are not overwhelmed.  A good starter size for vegetable gardens is 10’x 20’ or 20’ x 20’.  You can always expand next year.

      To site your garden, you need a spot that gets at least eight hours of full sun each day, has good drainage, won’t be competing with tree or shrub roots and has access to water. 

      Remove the sod, till up the soil and add organic matter such as bagged compost.  The first few years, it’s a good idea to plan your garden on graph paper.  Seed packets will tell you how far apart to space seeds and rows so you can get a good idea of how much you’ll be able to plant.   If you decide to use transplants instead of seeds, there should be a tag stuck in the soil pack with the same information. 

      The seed packets also give information on how deep to plant the seeds, days to germination and days to harvest.  These are approximate dates – soil type, temperature, water and many other factors can affect germination and growth.  Sometimes the packets have a picture of the seedling so you’ll be able to distinguish them from weeds.

      Easy plants for beginners are carrots, onions, peas, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, zucchini, cucumbers and peppers.  You’ll probably want to buy transplants of the tomatoes and peppers.  Onions can be started from seeds or sets, which are little baby-sized onions.

      Make your vegetable garden look nice by including some easy-to-grow annual flowers.  They can either surround the bed or be planted in rows or blocks between the vegetables.  They will also attract pollinators to the vegetable plants.  Good flowers for vegetable gardens are zinnias, marigolds, cleome and cosmos.

      Once the soil warms up, about mid-June, lay straw, hay or grass clippings as a mulch between the rows.  This will keep the weeds down, hold soil temperatures more constant and conserve water.

Does anyone grow turnips or rutabagas anymore?  I recall references to turnips in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales book I read as a child and I remember my great-aunt in Michigan serving us rutabagas.  Although I don’t know of anyone who grows either of these root crops today, I have to think that there are a good number of people who do, since there are so many different seed varieties offered in the mail order catalogs.

      Turnips are cool season crops that should be planted in early spring, grown quickly and eaten young.  When they get large and the weather gets hot, they get tough and bitter.  Turnips need soil that is high in organic matter and drains well, but is able to hold some water.  They need a constantly moist soil so that they grow as quickly as possible.  If growth slows down, they become woody and strong-flavored.  They are best eaten when they are 2-4 inches in diameter.  At this point they will be tender with a zesty flavor.  Turnip greens are also very nutritious.

      To avoid flea beetles and root maggots, it is a good idea to cover the row with a floating row cover immediately after sowing the seeds.  Young turnips can be harvested in about 30 days, with the full-sized ones to follow at 40-50 days.

      Turnips and rutabagas are related to cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli so they are subject to the same diseases and pests.  To reduce those problems, avoid planting them where any of these have been grown in the past three years.

      Turnips may be round, egg-shaped or rounded and slightly flattened.  The upper part of the root pushes above the soil and is topped by a cluster of broad, strap-like deep green leaves with deeply cut margins.

      Turnips can be eaten raw in salads, braised, fried, roasted or canned.   They are high in dietary fiber, vitamin C, manganese, vitamin B6, folate, calcium, potassium and copper.

      Rutabagas are a cross between turnips and cabbage.  They mature more slowly and last much longer in storage than turnips.  Their flesh is yellowish in color while turnip flesh is white.

      Rutabagas are planted much later than turnips – between June 1 and 15 in our area.  They are a good crop for winter storage and the quality and taste is better if harvested after a few light frosts.

      Rutabagas require 1- 1 ½ inches of water per week during the growing season, so with the late planting time, be prepared to do some supplemental watering.

      Rutabagas can be blanched, braised, stewed or roasted and they store very well for up to six months in the refrigerator.  Or mulch them heavily right in the garden for harvest until the ground freezes.  They are high in vitamin C, folate and fiber.

A few days before Christmas, the mailbox yields a couple last minute greeting cards and the property tax bill folded inside the spring Jung Seed catalog.  In the days after Christmas after the gifts are put away and the tax check is written, it is nice to sit down to peruse the catalog and begin dreaming of next year’s garden.

      I got as far as page 12 in this year’s catalog when I realized that there are a lot of fruits we can grow here in Wisconsin besides the usual apples, pears, grapes, strawberries and raspberries. 

      The first one that caught my eye was the ‘Eastern Prince’ Magnolia Vine.  These 10-12 foot vines are important food crops in China and Russia.  The vines bear small, fragrant magnolia-like flowers followed by clusters of berries high in vitamin C and a compound called shizandrin, which supports liver health.  The berries are tart and are used for juice and preserves, while the leaves, shoots are roots make a healthful tea.  ‘Eastern Prince’ grows in sun or part shade and begins bearing fruit at about its third year.

      Cornelian cherries are actually dogwoods.  They bloom with graceful yellow flowers in spring followed by sweet-tart juicy red fruits and then scarlet fall color.  The high vitamin C fruits are used fresh or in baked goods, preserves, juice or wine.  They ripen in late August beginning 2–3 years after planting.  Jung offers three different Cornelian cherry varieties; planting two different varieties insures a larger crop.  They can be grown as shrubs or as small 12–15 foot trees.

      Nero aronia is a 3-4 foot shrub with blue-black blueberry-sized fruits, also high in vitamin C.  In spring, the shrub is covered with large clusters of snowy white flowers.  The fruits ripen in fall and are used for juice, jam and wine.

      The berries of mountain ashes are usually eaten by desperate birds in late winter.  However, there is a mountain ash cultivar with fruits suitable for human consumption.  Rabina mountain ash has good tasting fruit with a sweet-tart flavor.  The fruits are high in vitamin A and, you guessed it, vitamin C.  The berries are good for eating fresh and in juice, preserves, pastry and wine.  The trees grow to about 20 feet tall and have attractive foliage that turns red-orange in the fall.

      Russian quince ‘Aromatnaya’ is yet another fruit high in vitamin C.  This is a lovely tree that grows 10–15 feet tall.  In late spring it displays beautiful cup-shaped white flowers that are followed by large fragrant rounded fruits.  The waxy yellow fruits are tender and taste mildly like pineapple.  They can be eaten fresh or used for jams, jellies, baked goods, flavoring and canning. 

      Have you noticed a theme here?  All these unusual fruits are high in vitamin C.  Just because we can’t grow oranges and grapefruits in Wisconsin doesn’t mean that our vitamin C has to come from the grocery store!

      It was late summer and I just wanted to grow something, anything.  It was too late to plant seeds outdoors.  I’d been thinking about growing alfalfa sprouts for years, but thought it was too complicated.  It turns out it is easy, fun and best of all, fast.

      Sprouts can be grown on your kitchen counter top in a quart canning jar with a mesh screen or even a piece of pantyhose stretched across the top.  Use a canning screw top or a thick rubber band to hold the mesh in place.  The point is to be able to drain water out of the jar, but keep the seeds inside.

      If you want to spend more money on the project, all manner of sprout growing equipment can be found on the internet. 

      Seeds for sprouting can be purchased at most health food stores, by mail order from garden seed companies or over the internet.  I bought a pound of seed the first time, and that is going to last for a very long time!  

      Some of the kinds of sprout seeds available are alfalfa, clover, radish, broccoli, sunflower, mustard, onion, mung bean, soy bean, and lentil.  For my first time, I bought a mix of several kinds of seed.

      Here’s what to do.  Put two tablespoons of seed in a quart jar and fill the jar about half full of water.  Soak the seed for 8–12 hours.  Drain the water out through the screen top.  Every 8–12 hours for five or six days, rinse the seed by running water into the jar and swishing it around before draining it out again.  To keep the seed from clumping together, roll the jar a bit so the seeds cling to the jar sides. 

      The sprouts will germinate by the end of the second day and get bigger each day.  It is not necessary for the jar to be in the sun or even bright light.  On the last day, though, set the jar in the sun for 15-30 minutes so the sprouts green up.  If the sprouts are clumped tightly together, loosen them with a fork or your fingers before setting them in the sun so the light can reach more of them.  Refrigerate the sprouts after the sun treatment.

      Ideal growing temperature is 70 degrees, but my house isn’t that warm and they grow just fine.  Lower temps result in slower growing sprouts while higher temps make them grow faster.  When the room temperature is very warm, be sure to rinse the sprouts every eight hours.  Warm air and the heat produced by the growing sprouts themselves can encourage the growth of disease organisms.   If you smell an “off” odor, discard the batch and start over in a clean jar.

      Sprouts are highly nutritious.  They provide vitamins A, B, C, E and K, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, carotene, chlorophyll, amino acids, trace elements and protein.

Do tomatoes need pruning?  Garden experts disagree.  The bottom line is that tomatoes will do just fine without pruning . . . but there are some good reasons to prune.

      Pruned tomatoes take up less space than unpruned ones and are less likely to become top-heavy and topple their support cages.  There will be fewer fruits but individual tomatoes will be bigger since the plant has more energy to put into each one.  Pruning opens up the plant so that air can circulate better, which helps leaves to dry faster and prevents disease.  The big benefit is that they are likely to set fruit up to two weeks earlier than they otherwise would.

      Late season pruning allows more warmth and sunlight to get to the tomatoes to help them ripen faster.  At this point, new growth on the plant itself won’t have time to produce more tomatoes anyway.

      The parts of the tomato that are pruned, if you choose to do so, are the suckers.  These are little stems that sprout in the crotches of main branches.  They can easily be snapped off with your fingers.  If you need a scissors or pruning shears to do the job, you’ve waited too long.  Too heavy pruning may cause the leaves to roll.  It won’t hurt the plants, but take note and back off a bit next time.

      If allowed to grow, each of the suckers will become another big stem with its own branches, blossoms, fruits and even suckers. 

      If the plants are in a very hot sunny area, pruning is probably best left undone.  The fruits need some shade to avoid sunscald.  At first, a yellowish-white patch appears on the side of the tomato facing the sun.  The area gets larger as the fruit ripens and becomes grayish-white.  An alternative is to let the suckers develop a few leaves to shade the fruits, and then pinch out the tops to stop the growth.

      While pruning is a matter of gardener’s choice, mulching is always recommended.  To avoid the many fungal diseases that splash up onto tomato plants from the soil, lay down a mulch under each plant, being careful not to let it touch the stems.  The mulch also keeps tomatoes that are touching the ground clean.  Some mulch possibilities are untreated grass clippings, shredded leaves, pine needles, hay or straw. 

      Fungal diseases usually start at the bottom of the plant and work their way up.  You’ll notice yellow leaves or yellow, red or brown spots on the leaves, which eventually dry up and fall off.  Remove any diseased leaves from the area and do not compost them.  Tomatoes that ripen on the diseased plant are fine to use, but at the end of the season, pull up and destroy the entire plant.  Next year, put your mulch in place earlier.