Long days are at their peak this week, we can garden into the evening, plants take all this light and grow like crazy.  June is what I think of as the tweener month, the spring stuff is all fading and the summer stuff not fully on.  Luckily some spring planted vegetables are probably ready now, like beets, carrots, lettuce, chard.  But the peas go fast once it gets hot, and a lot of greens like spinach and pac choi often bolt with the first hot days.  Most of us gardeners also feel a sense of relief by mid June as most of the summer crops are in and mainly we just need to weed.  It is also a good time to remember succession planting, you can greatly increase the harvest season by planting successions of bush beans, summer squash, cucumbers and basil in the next few weeks.  . 

If you have not started to harvest your garlic yet, you should probably give it a good look over.   I usually stop all water the first of June, and when half the leaves have turned yellow I pull the garlic.  Put it in a warm spot out of the direct sun and off the ground to dry, either laying out flat on something or hanging.  Once it is completely dry, brush off the dirt and clean it up and find a cool spot with low moisture and light to store it,  The soft neck garlic can be braided, hard neck is too stiff to braid so I usually cut off the tops and roots and store it in a mesh bag.

I also start doing a little extra feeding of the plants now as they start to really grow.  I use a kelp and fish liquid fertilizer and either spray it on the leaves for a foliar feed in the early morning or water it in with a watering can..  The liquid fertilizers are a quick feed versus some of the slower releasing soil amendments.  I usually do this every two weeks. 

Cucumber beetles (diabrotica) can be a real pest once it warms up.  They are the little beetles that look like a green and black lady bugs.  They can destroy beans and most of the cucurbit family (cucumbers, squash, melons) if in high enough population.  When I start to see them, I look on the bottom of the leaves and squish them, if they are starting to do real damage, cover the plants with row covers (but you have to get the beetles off the plants first by disturbing the leaves so they fly away). 

On the local internet garden group there was a flurry of thoughts on gophers recently, and I wanted to give you my thoughts on them.  I think gophers are probably the number one pest for the majority of gardeners in Sonoma County, if you are lucky enough to not have to deal with them, count your blessings.  There are lots of mythical solutions out there, from Wrigley’s gum to pinwheels in bottles, but in my experience none of those work for gophers.   I think there are really only two ways to deal with gophers in an organic method.  One is exclusion- build raised beds with gopher wire on the bottom, plant into gopher cages, or garden in containers.  The other is serious trapping.  And to do that well, you need to have some lessons.  There are two traps I recommend, one is the cinch trap and the other I like even more is called Trapline.  Get someone to show you how to set them, as that is a bit tricky.  Look for throws and then dig down and find the run, put 2 traps in, one in each direction.  Make sure the trap is tied to a stake as the gopher might just take it down the run with it if it is not killed.  If you don’t get a gopher in the first 24 hours try another place, I find it is either immediately or not at all that I catch them. 

Make sure it is gophers you have, moles also tunnel about but do not pull whole plants down, as they do not eat plants. their throws also look a bit different.   Voles can also be a problem but they usually eat plants at the base not from below.  Voles can be caught with mousetraps. 

Happy Solstice!