Trellising tomatoes and harvesting herbs: 5 things to do in the garden
1. Trellis your row of tomato plants while they are still small. Hammer 8-foot stakes two feet into the ground, one on each end of the row and 10 feet apart within the row. Install hardware cloth (hard wire mesh) between the stakes. Place one tomato plant every two feet. Prune most suckers, allowing two or three stems to grow. You will not need to tie up your plants; just weave their stems in and out of the wire.
2. If you do not keep several inches of mulch around your citrus trees at all times – in which case fertilization of these and other fruit trees is not necessary – now is the time for the fourth and final application of citrus fertilizer for the year. The first fertilization is made in early February and every six weeks thereafter until this final application. Make it easy on yourself by procuring a product specially formulated for citrus and avocado fertilization, several of which are available at nurseries, home improvement centers or online vendors.
3. This is the appropriate time to plant citrus trees. If you want to eat fresh oranges all year long, plant one Valencia tree and one navel. Valencia fruit ripens from March through October, while navels ripen from November into June. Olinda is a seedless Valencia variety that only grows 12 feet tall and six feet across. It will thrive in a container for years as long as its soil is annually replaced with a soil mix recommended for citrus and cactus. To bring any fruit tree to its potential in a container, the soil must be changed annually.
4. If the ends of your apple tree shoots look as though they have been torched, know that they are victims of a disease appropriately named fireblight. Pyracantha, Photinia, and toyon are also susceptible to it. This disease is caused by a bacteria that enters the plant through nectaries at the base of its flower petals and is most likely to occur when it rains during bloom time, as occurred this year when we were visited by late winter and early spring rain. When pruning off fireblight-infected shoots, dip your pruning shears or loppers in a 10 percent bleach solution between cuts which should be made a few inches back from the infected area. Otherwise, the cutting tool, which picks up bacteria from the sap of the plant, will be a vector for spreading the disease.
5. After harvesting herbs, it is recommended to hang them upside down to dry. The reason for this is to promote flow – from the stems into the leaves – of the essential oils responsible for the herbs’ flavor. Lemon balm, mint, basil, and tarragon require immediate drying since they have a higher moisture content than other herbs; if they are not immediately dried, they could get moldy. When it comes to making tea, one teaspoon of dried herbs is equivalent to one tablespoon of fresh herbs. Incidentally, lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) tea is especially salubrious as evidenced by the life of Englishman John Hussey, who lived to the age of 116. For the last 50 years of his life, he made his breakfast tea from lemon balm mixed with honey.
You are invited to email me at joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions, comments, and photos are always welcome.