Gardening with Chip Bubl, July 10

July is garlic month. It should be ready to harvest. The ideal time to “pull” garlic is when there are two to three "skins" around the outermost cloves. If garlic is left in the ground and there is enough soil moisture, it will continue to grow and push through the skins. The bulbs will not look attractive and, without the skin cover, will not store as well. You should not water garlic now. It needs to dry.

Harvest garlic early rather than late. Don’t wait until the foliage has all turned brown. Dig what you think is a representative bulb and pull it apart. Count the skins and look at the cloves. If it looks right, though perhaps a little green and moist, it probably is ready to go. At this point, you can eat some of the bulb for dinner or lunch. If there are still lots of skins, leave the crop in for a week or so longer. You will read that the “tops” must be dried down in the ground before harvest. That isn't true in Western Oregon and Washington, where soil moisture may keep the plant quite green well past the ideal harvest stage.

Different varieties may have slightly different growth stages but generally, all can be harvested by mid-July.

Dig garlic with the tops intact, shake dirt off the roots, bundle the plants with twine, label the varieties, and put them in a dry place with good air flow but little direct sun. It is dangerous to dry garlic in the direct sun, especially if it is very succulent coming out of the ground. Garlic will sunburn, turning the cloves a waxy orange. These are not edible and will soon rot.

The bulbs/cloves can be eaten at any time, and they will be ready for storage after two to six weeks, depending on the moisture level going into storage and the drying weather after harvest.

If you have had trouble storing garlic over the winter, you might try taking some of the cloves apart and storing some of them in the freezer. Their culinary quality remains quite good.

Save bulbs with the largest cloves for fall planting. There is a direct correlation between clove size planted and the bulb you ultimately get. Have your garlic beds prepared for planting by mid-October or sooner if it looks like a wet fall.

Vegetable side-dressing

Side-dressing means adding more nitrogen-rich fertilizer to a growing plant to get the quality and quantity of produce you expect. Place the fertilizer on the surface adjacent to the plant and water it in the following: asparagus (Feb. and June), lettuce (when four inches tall), beets (when four inches tall), peppers (when fruit sets), cabbage etc. (30 days after planting), potatoes (when eight inches tall), corn (when eight inches and 24 inches tall), tomatoes (when fruit sets), cukes and squash (when vines start to run).

Nitrogen fertilizer can be organic but must be able to release its “N” (nitrogen) reasonably quickly. Blood meal or feather meal should do the trick, though the “N” is somewhat slower to become available to the plants than conventional fertilizers. They should be used earlier. Conventional fertilizers like urea, calcium nitrate, or ammonium sulfate dissolve in water quickly and are soon picked up by plants. If your plants are a pale green when they should be a deep green, they are nitrogen deficient and you need to get more “N” to them right away, even if it isn’t the right stage for side-dressing. Corn is the home garden crop that most often shows nitrogen deficiency symptoms.

A caterpillar in your cabbage

The most common butterfly around the garden is the white-winged species known as the imported cabbage worm. As the name implies, this insect is not native to North America but comes, as cabbage does, from Europe.

The butterfly winters over as a chrysalis and emerges as an adult in May. The females lay yellow eggs on the undersides of the leaves of cabbages, brussel sprouts, broccoli, and other cabbage family members. A female can lay as many as 200 eggs on multiple plants. The caterpillars hatch and start eating. Sometimes they are hard to see within a broccoli head before cooking but disgustingly obvious afterwards. There can be three to five generations each year.

The best controls are floating row covers and/or the microbial insecticide bacillus thuringiensis. Make sure you buy the B.t. for caterpillar control. B.t. has virtually no mammalian toxicity and only kills larvae in the butterfly/moth family. It has no impact on other insect groups. B.t. does not migrate off target. It needs to be applied when the larvae are small to be most effective and should be reapplied after a rain or overhead irrigation. There are some resistant varieties.

Final notes

Take excess produce to food banks, senior centers, or community meals programs. Cash donations to buy food for the food banks are also greatly appreciated. Very helpful information sources are your local Extension offices. The Columbia County Extension can be reached at 503-397-3462, and the Wahkiakum County Extension can be reached at 360 795-3278. The Extension Service offices offer their programs and materials equally to all people. They will all know where you can get your pressure gauge tested.

Advice on future garden topics welcome be emailing me at chip.bubl@oregonstate.edu.