The gardener's early June to-do list

Gardeners are busy in June, trying to grow food and add beauty to their yards. Your efforts are quite likely to succeed, thanks to the moisture provided by recent storms.

It is time to stake, trellis or cage your tomato plants. Supports such as these allow tomatoes to grow upward, away from the ground where pests and disease are concentrated. Tomato vines also produce the maximum amount of edible fruit per square foot of garden space when grown vertically.

Tomatoes have needed little or no watering, due to the wet weather. However, fertilizing is needed on a regular basis for summer-long tomato production, and nitrogen is the nutrient to apply.

Liquid fertilizers used every two weeks or granular (dry) fertilizers used once a month will do the job nicely. Pour the liquids at the base of the tomato vine and keep them off the foliage, because leaf wetness promotes blight.

June is the month when onion plants finish bulbing. You can eat onions at any stage of growth, and their bulbs will be fully mature when their leaves flop over on to the ground and start to turn yellow. This always happens at the end of June or during the first part of July.

To prevent rot, harvest your onions promptly at maturity and put them on a porch or carport to cure prior to storing them in your basement. You will be eating these onions for the next six months.

Tender new potatoes are ready to dig now. These jewels of the garden have great flavor, but they are not the kind of thing you can store for very long. Potatoes keep best if you let them stay in the garden until next month when their leaves turn yellow and brown. Tubers harvested at that time have thicker skins than new potatoes, and they will stay good in storage for at least six months.

The main insect threat to potatoes is Colorado potato beetle, and it is very common now. A new insecticide popular in organic gardens works well on this pest, and its name is spinosad. It is sold under various brand names. For example, the Ferti-lome company calls it Borer, Bagworm, Tent Caterpillar, and Leafminer Spray.

Free space is opening up in gardens as spinach and lettuce go to seed, and crops such as peas and cabbage are harvested. This is an opportunity to replant with vegetables for summer, including cucumber, squash, melon, pumpkin, bean, blackeyed pea and sweet corn. A late crop of tomato is possible if you set out seedlings by the end of June.

Cutting your grass once a week or more will reduce its appeal to ticks. These pests prefer overgrown vegetation and they are now abundant. You can protect yourself by wearing insect repellent containing DEET and avoiding tick-infested areas. Under extreme conditions, spraying your lawn with Sevin insecticide could be necessary. These comments also apply to chiggers.

News and notes
Bedford’s Master Gardener Program will be offering a training class for new Master Gardeners this fall, Aug. 27 through Nov. 5. Classes for these volunteers will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the County Administration Building in Bedford. For more information, contact the Bedford Extension Office at (540) 586-7675.