Garden writer Susan Mulvihill shares some of her top tips for successfully growing a vegetable garden while she takes care of some important tasks. These include thinning seedlings, monitoring your garden regularly, why weeding is so worth your time, mulching potato plants, and ways to keep birds away from your crops. From Susan’s in the Garden, SusansintheGarden.com.
Susan gardens in Spokane, Wash. While most of this region is in hardiness zone 6, her garden is in a microclimate, making it zone 5b.
Susan’s newest book, The Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook, is available! You can order a signed copy of the book or Susan’s previous book, The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook, by sending her an email at [email protected].
Here are her affiliate links to the books on Amazon:
1. Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook: https://amzn.to/3uIMA0A.
2. Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook: https://amzn.to/3Jh6aXS.
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Email me: [email protected]
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Wow! Susan too many critters😊 In Australia we worry about things that might bite us, not our plants. 😊 But I'll be on the lookout anyway
I agree, Gardener's Supply has great products, I have some if the chicken wire cloches. Tfs!
Thanks for these ideas for protecting your plants. I also have some issues in my raised beds of having roly polys eating my veggies roots. They recently ate my young 10" high tomato plant in one day, and yesterday, they ate the roots completely off of my zucchini plant. Any suggestions on how to protect my plants from Roly Polys underground?
It is always difficult to thin carrots. I do it begrudgingly. 😊
Just a thought from someone who also hates to waste: I believe carrot tops are edible, similar to parsley, so perhaps they can be put into a dish that calls for parsley–maybe potato soup, etc?
I am using some of the plastic colanders from Dollar Tree to cover some of my susceptible plants. They only cost $1.25 and allow in some sunlight, and I can water with them on.
I’m having difficulty also with birds and I believe voles. We never had the voles before and the pressures from both are decimating peas and beets. I think a pepper or two as well and maybe a cut worm. Terrible time to get lettuce and beets and I think something is eating them. Each time I look there were less beets and I have a time to grow those and carrots, but never had peas attacked. I had tulle on the peas, but I think I should have waited a bit longer. Now I’m going to transplant to condense peas and get more beets, carrots and rutabagas going.
Any ideas about small rodents like voles? We just trapped a couple in the second garden as they were tunneling under new bare root stock in orchard. I think that’s the only way. When we moved here we had to eradicate a Huge gopher population and now it seems they turned into voles.😏. Sorry for those that don’t agree with total removal, but there is plenty of earth to go around and my little speck of area is what feeds us, not them. It’s too costly to do the work to have it destroyed.
I agree that this spring has been not ideal to start gardening off. Tonight they say 41* and then a heat wave AND we have had NO rain! Ugh! Only 30% chance June 2nd. Talk about an $80 tomato!😮.
Trying to find ways to be more frugal. I’ve seen many make fertilizer slurry in pails of various green matter and compost and let it sit for a couple weeks. After that they mix a bit into watering can to fertilize with. I keep telling myself once the hardware is in place costs should go down and I’m getting quality food. Fencing is the cost that is unavoidable for us and now we have voles and I can’t justify hardware cloth price. Then the hoops, cloths and irrigation—yikes! Almost have second orchard/garden area finished. We added chickens again so the fertilizer is combined with feed cost eventually as the manure needs to sit for several months. It will be so much fun to watch the chickens this fall cleaning up the garden.
I am so hoping to save seeds this year of varieties that do well here. This is the year I’m trying dozens of varieties of tomatoes and peppers.
And here I thought it would be a bad bug year, but the rodents and wildlife are kicking it off.
Thanks for all the tips! I use sticks around plants that are not fenced in also😊. Keep cool 😎
Yes now is the time to do a lot of little jobs now that the plants are mostly in. Today I clipped tomatoes to a string trellis and pinched off suckers. Did some weeding, and added more leaf mulch to bare spots. I dont have much animal problems, but I know soon the insects will be out, then its time to mix up some neem oil spray.
Clever ideas Susan. I do not over seed. I space everything out per the final growing distance. It breaks my heart to pull out a healthy plant. That's just me. Have a good weekend. Thanks for the video.
Enjoyed the video, thank you Susan.
Oh the critters…..squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer, elk and neighborhood cats and dogs. There are days I wonder why I keep gardening until I pick that first fresh pea and know it is worth all the effort.
Great advice Susan!!
Can you just cut the unwanted carrot seedlings with scissors?
I love that you have a Chickadee visit you in the garden. So much so that I was thrilled when a Sparrow started hanging out in mine. I named him Jack, get it? Jack Sparrow? Anyway Jack turned out to be Jackie and she made a nest in my strawberry bed! I was just about to order bird netting to keep out the birds and she has set up housekeeping inside! Guess I'll have to get creative. I peeked and there are 5 baby birds, so I'm a wildlife grandma😉
Love your creative strategies!!
I just got on here to ask whether the extra carrot seedlings could be cut off at soil level and leave the "roots" to compost in the ground. I saw someone else had the same question. What are your thoughts?
I got some half-inch tubing with which to make hoops, but I don't know how long to cut them. Perhaps you addressed this in a former video?