By Mary Lowther
You can still have a garden if you go away in the summer. In fact, you might be in for a pleasant surprise, as I was when David and I returned from a two month vacation to godforsaken parts of Canada like Moncton and Sudbury where no one donates blood in the summer because hordes of mosquitoes, black flies and no see ums have drained everyone dry.
I had planted garlic the previous October, never watered it at all and harvested a bumper crop in September when we got back. Garlic stalks grew several feet high and when I dug up the bulbs they had mostly split apart and the outside skins looked mouldy. I didn’t hold out much hope because garlic doesn’t usually store well once it has split, but that’s garlic that has been harvested mid-July, when most of the tops dry out. Guess what? Mine stored so well that I’ve been giving them away all winter and still have hard, healthy bulbs in my pantry. This is the best garlic I’ve ever grown!
The secret to having food to come back to lies in preparing the soil and setting up a reliable watering system for everything except garlic. The previous early fall, sow cover crops that will hold nutrients in the soil and add their own the following spring when you dig them under. I like a mix of winter rye, fava beans and crimson clover because they’re cheap and work very well. I cover the freshly-sown seeds with Remay draped over hoops and battened down so the birds won’t peck them all out. Once the seeds have sprouted and sent up greenery the Remay can come off.
Next spring, dig this all in, spread a layer of your compost and organic fertilizer at the rate of four litres per hundred square feet. Preparing your soil like this each year helps it retain water and sustain crops during the dry summer.
Pick crops that will grow all summer and that you harvest in September, like corn, onions, tomatoes, potatoes and winter squash. Plant them farther apart than usual because you won’t be giving them any more fertilizer during the summer. Set up a windbreak fence around the corn patch just in case hurricane Hilda visits again. Contain each tomato plant in a tall cage and make sure they are protected from rain to prevent late blight from sticking to their leaves.
Hill up potatoes until the last minute and then let them fend for themselves. Squash can be left to meander at will and, if planted near the corn, may send shoots into the patch and help cool the soil.
Set up soaker hoses hooked up to a timer that you set for half an hour early in the morning, twice a week. Your plants will grow deep roots and, because you aren’t watering the surrounding soil as you would with an overhead sprinkler, weeds won’t flourish on the rest of the soil or compete with your crops for nutrients. Home Hardware and Irly Bird sell good timers at competitive prices. Once the hoses and plants are in place, get a bale of straw from Buckerfields and mulch the whole garden, including the paths. You want at least six inches to help smother weeds and keep the soil cool.
When you get back from your vacation, rake all the mulch off, toss it into the compost heap and sow cover crop to take the garden through the winter.
You might also try planting a few herbs and flowers that will last all summer and early fall to attract bees, add colour to the yard and perhaps house a few good luck fairies.
Please contact mary_lowther@yahoo.ca with questions and suggestions since I need all the help I can get.
