divaqs's Blog
divaqs's posts about: slugs
May 13, 2007 | 5:00 PM PST
Tags: salad , lettuce , winter garden , leaf lettuce , slugs , baby greens , spinach
One of the things I love about where I live, in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, is that the seasons are relatively mild. I figure that this is due to the many cloudy days we have in Seattle, which keep temperatures more even.
As a gardener, what this means is that I can have a year round salad garden. The trick to it is planting the right amounts at the right time. For example, in summer things grow quick, so I plant less and more often. In late summer and fall I turn a majority of my garden over to growing my winter and spring salad garden. In winter, things pretty much stop growing, so whatever I was able to plant and grow in fall is what I will have to last me through the winter. In spring, is when things start to grow again, so the smaller salad plants I planted in the fall start to get some growth on them again.
A couple of weeks ago I planted a small section of my garden with my first summer salad items. I am still harvesting lettuce and spinach that I planted last fall, while I wait for my summer lettuce and spinach to grow. In other words, the pictures below are of different kinds of lettuce that I planted last year, which either survived the winter or grew early this spring from seed still in the ground.
I’ve found that I like variety in my salad. I learned this the hard way. Two years ago I tried to feed myself and my family salads made from a single type of lettuce. Boring salads quickly grow unappetizing.
So, I now tend to buy lettuce mixes that are season or theme based.
Overall, I prefer leaf lettuce, since it is easy to cut back just a part of it and let the plant grow back, allowing me multiple harvests.
Being an edible landscaper, I try to incorporate aesthetics in my salad gardens by intermingling my salad plants with other companion plants. I avoid planting in rows, unless that is the shape of the area I am planting in. This makes for a much more natural and organic look to my garden, which I find much more pleasing to look at.
I tend to over plant, then thin out the plants as baby greens for salad. The salads made out of baby greens are really good, though it takes more time washing the smaller greens.
I prefer growing my salad greens in my raised garden beds, which are formed out of treated lumber. The treatment process is based on a copper compound, which seems to detract the slugs more. It doesn't totally eliminate the slugs getting to my lettuce, but I do see a lot less slug damage.
Apr 19, 2007 | 8:27 AM PST
Tags: onions , compantion planting , treated wood , slugs , winter garden
I've been working on creating a permanent onion patch, with the idea of the patch getting large enough that I can rely on it for all my onion needs.
Last spring I ordered and planted yellow multiplier onions, described as;
"These winter-hardy bulbs have yellow skins and white flesh tinged with purple. With proper nutrition and good conditions, you can expect a cluster of 10-12 or more mild and sweet-flavored bulbs to form from a single bulb. Multiplier onions keep for 8-12 months in good storage conditions. Plants can be used as green bunching onions if pulled in the spring."
I wasn't sure how to incorporate this into a landscape design, so I started it in a 4 foot by 8 foot garden box I built a couple of years ago.
In the above picture, you are seeing the remnants of the salad greens I over-wintered, intermingled with onions. I have a lot of miner's lettuce seedlings, which are volunteer seedlings from my experiment in trying it out last year and it re-seeding itself.
I found the flavor of miner's lettuce to be pretty uninspiring, so I will probably only let one or two of the seedlings reach full size, which can be a few feet in height.
The onions definitely multiplied, forming bunches of onions, which I spread out more evenly in the garden box during February, with the exception of one large bunch I left in the middle to see how it would fare. I figure that by next year I will have reached the point of having so many onions that I won't have to worry about running out if I use them in an unrestrained manner in my cooking.
The onions are smaller in size then the typical walla walla size onions I see in the store, so it might take more to cook with. I probably won't need a lot, since I use chives from my yard as well, as an onion substitute.
Once I get a feel for how they would look in a landscape setting, I might try intermingling some in other parts of my yard and herb beds.
I used pressure treated wood for the planter box, after I did some research to verify that the chemical treatment had been changed from the previous cancer causing compounds that include chromium and arsenic, to one based on copper. The EPA did a bunch of research on the treatment process, which prompted the change. Copper has a nice side affect of discouraging slugs, since it reacts in a way with their slime, which they seem to avoid. I haven't seen many slugs getting into this garden bed, which is a nice side benefit, and one of the reasons I have salad greens companion planted with the onions.
For most of my garden I try to use companion planting, since it seems to decrease problems with pests and disease, but for an edible landscaper like me, more importantly adds more visual appeal. I worry less about visual appeal in my garden boxes, but still try to use some of the concepts. Onions can be a great companion plant since many pests avoid them.
