Gardening with Chip

What do you do for December gardens?

The following is a list of actions that apply to gardeners this time of year: apply lime. Take a soil test if you haven’t had one recently. If you have questions, call the Extension office for details. Stay off your lawn while it is so soggy. Wet soils compact with weight on them, and the pore spaces that allow drainage and air around the roots get squished. Cover your compost pile to speed up the composting process. Cover edible herbaceous perennials like rhubarb and asparagus with compost or “strawy” manure. Repeat for ornamental perennials like peonies and daylilies. Clean and refill bird feeders regularly. High moisture days tend to sprout or mold seed towards the bottoms of the feeders. Provide hummingbirds with sugar water (one part sugar to four parts water) throughout the winter. Clean those feeders regularly as well. Start looking at seed catalogs and planning your vegetable gardens for next year. Water plants under eaves if you haven’t recently. The two most common pantry pests - the drug store beetle and the Indian meal moth - are more evident this time of year, probably because we are home more. Look for some management information in the next column. Protect container plants from severe cold by grouping them together and putting a sheet or some row cover over them on the coldest days. Some could be moved into a cold garage that stays above freezing for the periods of time when temperatures drop below 32 degrees.

Why do parsnips, carrots, and kale taste sweeter after a frost?

Some biennial vegetables are known to have better (read sweeter) flavor after a frost. These vegetables evolved to overwinter and flower the following spring. Sugar in and around plant tissue acts as an anti-freeze, lowering the temperatures before destructive ice crystals form between and inside plant cells. The pace of fall cooling helps gradually increase the sugar concentrations and develop the flavors. A series of 32-degree frost “nips” produces better flavors than warmer days, followed by a 28-degree event. Carrots and parsnips are noted for their frost response, assuming field mice haven’t gotten to them. Some of the cabbage family - including some varieties of head cabbage, most of the kales, and Brussels sprouts - also become sugar enhanced after a series of light frosts. Winter squash, however, are damaged by frosts and need to be harvested and stored before a hard frost.

Fruit flies drink to stay well

Fruit fly numbers are finally slowing down. Good sanitation helps, and so do colder temperatures and less fresh fruit on the counters. Fruit flies reproduce by laying their eggs on or near rotting fruit. The maggots hatch, feed on the yeasts and bacteria that rot the fruit, develop into adult fruit flies that mate and lay eggs and so it goes.

Recent research studied a tiny wasp that lays its eggs in fruit fly maggots; but, since it takes some time for the wasp larva to develop, the maggot is not killed by their presence. Instead, it continues to grow after the maggot turns into a fly. Eventually, the adult fruit fly dies from the feeding in what probably is an awful death.

Fruit flies have a defense. They have a gene that produces an enzyme that detoxifies alcohol. Fruit flies maggots seek out yeasts which produce alcohol from the fruit they are rotting. The maggots get enough alcohol in their system to kill the wasp eggs but stay alive themselves by that defensive, alcohol-detoxifying enzyme. It doesn’t help to hit the sauce before the egg is laid, but those maggots will crawl on the double to alcohol-rich yeast colonies once they are infected with the wasp eggs. Self-medicating maggots! The wasp also dies a rather bizarre death, but I won’t go into that. One wasp species didn’t take this lying down. They evolved an alcohol tolerance to resist the maggot’s booze defense. A toast to both.

Take excess produce to the food bank, senior centers, or community meals programs. Cash donations to buy food for the food banks are also greatly appreciated. This is especially true now, since many of the federal food funds that helped the food banks have been cut hard. Sign up for Master Gardener trainings in either county. Very helpful information sources are your local Extension offices. The Columbia County Extension is 503-397-3462, and the Wahkiakum County Extension is 360-795-3278. The Extension Service offices offer their programs and materials equally to all people. Advice on future garden topics is always welcome by emailing me at chip.bubl@oregonstate.edu.