It’s getting warm out there and that means all those little critters are out and about trying to destroy your garden…
What’s an organic gardener to do, when we don’t believe in poisons or pesticides? Well here some of the typical pest you are bound to see this season, and some of the best know remedies to combat them organically.

Your Arsenal
In your arsenal you should have a Pump Sprayer, Neem Oil, Citrus Oil, Doctor Bonner’s Liquid Peppermint Soap, Liquid Seaweed, Liquid Molasses, Diotomatious Earth, BT – Bacillus thuringiensis, Garlic-Pepper-Seaweed Spray, Slug-O, and Vacuum Cleaner. With a combination of these items you can defend your garden from almost any pest! Here’s how to conquer each one…

The Pest

Aphids- Those tiny little green bugs on the back of your veggie leaves sucking out the juices, causing leaf curling and stunted growth.
Solutions – Strong blast of water, garlic-pepper tea, liquid seaweed, and ladybugs. Citrus oil can be used in extreme cases.

The Cabbage Loopers – aka. The Inch Worm, know for eating all your brassicas, as well as, parsley, peas, potatoes, lettuce, beans, and tomatoes. They are known for making your veggies look like swiss cheese.
Solution – Spray with BT and liquid molasses once a week in the evenings.

The Cucumber Beetle – Looks like and elongate yellow ladybug. Know for eating veggie flowers and foliage, as well as transmitting bacteria wilt and cucumber mosaic. Adults eat plant leaves, while larva attack the roots.
Solutions – Garlic-pepper-seaweed spray. For extreme cases use neem oil or citrus oil.

The Cut Worm – Know for cutting off young seedlings at ground level. They tend to attack tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and cabbage.
Solution – Diatomaceous Earth

Fire Ants – Ow! Although fire ants bit and are know for damaging electrical devices and killing baby animals they also have some benefits. So think about it before you use these methods… On the plus side, they eat ticks, chiggers, termites, flies, fleas, and cockroaches as well as many other things. They also help process organic matter.
Solutions – Diatomaceous Earth on dry days and a mix of compost tea, molasses and citrus oil anytime.

Harlequin Bugs – Red and black shield shaped bugs, know for feeding on brassicas, causing splotchy shriveling.
Solutions – Spray with compost tea, liquid seaweed, molasses, vinegar and citrus oil.

The Leafhopper – Cute little wedge-shaped insects with triangular heads, generally brown or green but sometimes brightly colored. Know for sucking the juices out of stems and leaves causing a mottled appearance.
Solutions – Strong blast of water or citrus oil.

The Mexican Bean Beetle – Looks like a yellow ladybug but don’t be deceived they are after your beans. They will eat all the leaves creating a skeleton effect.
Solutions – Garlic-pepper-tea or neem oil.

The Roly-Poly – Also very cute and fun to play with. They mainly eat organic matter and are beneficial to your garden ecosystem, but sometimes they get hungry and go for young plants.
Solutions – Sprinkle coarse red pepper flakes and Diatomaceous Earth around the base of your transplants to prevent possible attack.

The Snail and the Slug – Slimy little critters with or without shells, that eat mostly decaying organic matter but also will go after your favorite veggies.
Solutions – Crushed red pepper, Diatomaceous Earth, citrus oil, and coffee grounds sprinkled over mulch. You can also create snail traps with banana peals, apple cores, or beer left in pie plates at ground level. But the easiest solution is to go out and get some Slug-O!

The Spider Mite – Effected leaves turn silvery yellow and are covered with a thin web.
Solutions – Water properly. If you have good soil and your plants are being watered properly you shouldn’t have a problem. Spraying just about any organic solution every three days for with a total of four application should knock’em out of the park!

The Squash Bug – Looks like a longer version of the stink bug. Know for attacking cucumbers, squash, and melons.
Solutions – Crush the copper colored eggs found on the back of your veggie leaves. Spray with compost tea or molasses for more serious infestations.

The Squash Borer – A pretty narrow winged black and red moth with white caterpillars with brown heads. The larva are know for tunneling into the base of your squash vines, causing the whole plant to wilt and die.
Solutions – Look for the larva regularly. Then cut it out of the vine with a sharp knife. Or option two plant more squash… For some reason squash bores only attack small crops, you wont find them on production farms.

The Stink Bug – That bug your little brother taunted you with… brown, gray, or green shield shaped bugs. Know for going after you beans, peas, cabbage, corn, okra, squash, and tomatoes.
Solution – Squish it or suck it up with a vacuum cleaner.

The Tobacco Hornworm & The Tomato Hornworm – Both of these big, green caterpillars are know for going after your nigh shade veggies, aka tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. The Tobacco Hornworm caterpillars are big and green with diagonal white lines with a red tail. The Tomato Hornworm looks identical but has a black tail. These buggers can defoliate a plant over night!
Solutions – Go out at night and look for these feeders. Squish them! If you have an extreme case spray with BT and molasses.

Well that’s all folks… We hope that helps with your organic pest management. Let us know if you would like us to hook you up with any of the above mentioned solutions. OR you can always schedule a maintenance visit and we’ll gladly come out and attack your bugs for you!

Remember we are here anytime to answer your gardening questions simply email us. Or check out our wonderful local resource The Travis County Master Gardener Association – Help Desk. They Rock!

Happy Pest Free Gardening!

You may have not heard but we are now partnering with Microbial Earth in order to offer you the best composting system out there. Microbial Earth is an Austin-owned company whose mission is to make organic gardening easier through the use of high-quality (humified) compost tea and compost. They are committed to zero waste and improving the ecosystem services of the land through the most cost-effective methods as measured by the land’s production of food, fiber, feed, fuel, fertilizer, fresh water, and fresh air. They also strive to increase the biodiversity of the environments where they contribute. They are renting half of our farm in order to make there top of the line compost and compost tea. In return we are now able to offer you their Bokashi Bin Composting system. In the future we will be offering their compost tea and compost.

What is Bokashi Composting?

Bokashi Composting is a unique indoor product used to recycle food scraps into an organic soil conditioner and create your own homemade plant food. Bokashi means fermented organic matter. Bokashi composting uses anaerobic (without oxygen) fermentation to break down food scraps very quickly while avoiding rotting odors.

Why use the Bokashi Bin?
The Bokashi Bin produces a nutrient tea to feed to your garden and house plants, breaks down food scraps in less than half the time of conventional composting, and greatly increases the population of beneficial microbes. This system enables composting of all food scraps-including meat, dairy and oils- diverting them from landfills, it is a convenient and indoor solution, and there are no rotting orders.

How to Use Your Bokashi Bin
Add your food scraps to your Bokashi bin once a day (you can include meat and dairy as well as traditional compostable material).

Every time you add food scraps to your Bokashi bin, make sure the majority of food scraps are lightly dusted with bran. After a week or so, you will be able to drain the nutrient tea from the spout at the bottom of the bin. Once your bin begins producing tea, drain it every 2-3 days and dilute in a gallon of water.

Important Notes: Drain the nutrient tea out of the bin every 2-3 days.
Dilute the tea in 1 gallon of water. Immediately pour the solution on the soil around any plants in your home or garden. For quick and easy disposal, pour tea (of any dilution) down a drain to help clean the drain. Rinse with water.

For more information on how to use the Bokashi Composting System here is a link to a YouTube Video

How to Order
To get your Microbial Earth Bokashi Bin Composting System call 512-961-7117 or email us.
You Bokashi Bin Composting System includes one bin – a $65 value, one bag of bran – a $10 value, and three coupons for a bag of bran redeemable through us as needed – a $30 value.
We are offering this $105 value system for $100. Plus if you apply for the City of Austin Green30 Challenge you can receive a $75 rebate. Therefore you receive $105 Bokashi Composting System for only $25.

Also, you can have your Bokashi Composted buried in you yard by us as part of our maintenance services every other week.

Green30 Challenge Rebate Application
Take the Green30 Challenge! By downsizing to a green 30‐gallon trash cart and taking a composting class you may qualify for a rebate on a home composter. As part of Austin’s Zero Waste goal to reduce the amount of waste Austinites send to the landfill by 90% by the year 2040, rebates of 75%* of the value of a purchased home composter are being offered to Solid Waste Services residential customers.

click here to download the application form.

It has been a crazy around here. Our Living Social Deal was a hit. Many new installs and new clients contacting us everyday. We appreciate all the support from our friends and the community!

Beets – check out ‘em ya’ll – beets

Now that we have entered early April the looming heat of Summer is pressing and limiting the amount of things that we can put in the ground. Say good bye to all of the cool season/ Winter crops. No more lettuce, carrots, broccoli or cauliflower. You can probably still sneak some collards in and definitely can plant chard and beets though. It is almost time to plant all Summer crops. Some charts recommend waiting until mid April to plant okra, sweet potatoes and cantaloupe, but everything else is on the calendar. (We think that you can go ahead and start planting due to our early warm weather.)

If you have not got your tomatoes in the ground, I would seriously get on it. Those seem to be the most pressing, but you should also start thinking about beans, peppers, summer squash, cucumber and even watermelon. Remember if you don’t have time… We do! We offer complete maintenance services with garden prep, amending, fertilizing, planting, and mulching, plus delivery of tomato cages.

These carrots are ready for thinning.

Out in our garden, the overwintered carrots are down to just a few, the January and February planted ones are ready to be harvested, peas are starting to produce, beets are bangin’, lettuce is abundant and/or bolting, the tomatoes are almost waist high and flowering, the summer squash is starting to multiply rapidly and latest greens mix and chard are ready for nibbling. We planted some PacMan Broccoli at a clients in late February that already bolted with 1 inch flower clusters only.

We bought hundreds of feet of concrete re-enforcing wire this week to make tomato cages. Pre-made cages are $13 and will last for years. They are stronger and larger than the average Home Depot varieties. We also have numerous veggie starts – maters, squash, cukes, bell peppers, eggplant, cayenne peppers, jalapenos, watermelons, honeydew, and a fun french melon that is alot like a cantaloupe. Holla if you need any! They are $2 each for the first 20 and $1.25 each for each additional plant. Available for pick-up or delivery.

Also mid-April is the time to mulch your soil, after the soil has warmed. This keeps the moister in and the weeds down. Let us know if you would like some!

These tomatoes love the shelter provided by the plastic and are over 30″ tall!

I would like to give a shout out to Okra. Although my wife is gets a bit tired of this steady producer, I can’t seem to get enough. We did not even get around to frying it last summer, so I know there is still some ground to tread in the kitchen (not to mention some of the foreign dishes listed below). Okra is a big producer in Central Texas and should be a staple in everyone’s diet, especially those who enjoy eating fresh, local, in season and organic (it is a very hardy, trouble free plant).

Okra is a flowering plant in the mallow family (along with such species as cotton, cocoa, and hibiscus), valued for its edible green fruits. Okra’s scientific name is Abelmoschus esculentus, the plant is widely accepted to come from Africa, very likely from Ethiopia. It is a staple across the planet, but highly under utilized here in North America, famous only for its presence in well known Cajun dishes such as gumbo, and as a fried side to BBQ and fried catfish plates.

I was quite happy to find this recipe, which I recently brought to a pork chop dinner:

Okra Rice

1/2 pound bacon – cooked and crumbled
1/2 pound pecans – lightly roasted
1 large onion, chopped
3 cups sliced okra
1 (14.5 ounce) can chicken broth
1 cup uncooked rice
1 1/2 cups water

Cook the rice in the broth, and begin frying the bacon. Once the bacon is finished, simmer your onions and okra in the bacon grease (or use oil if this disgusts you as it does may people) until lightly brown. Lightly toast the pecans on a baking sheet, giving them a jiggle every once in awhile. When the rice is finished, combine all ingredients in a pot and add a bit more broth and let stew for 20-40 minutes.

I substituted half the bacon for toasted pecans and it was quite delicious. There are infinite possibilities with this rice pilaf style preparation – nuts, tomatoes, other veggies . . .

Check out more detail at AllRecipes.com
For those of you that are more adventurous, try some of these ways to prepare okra:
• Rango com quiabo (chicken with okra) – Brazil
• Callaloo, a Caribbean dish and the national dish of Trinidad & Tobago.
• Draw soup, often eaten with garri or cassava – Nigeria
• Canh chua – Vietnam
• Kadhi, a traditional North Indian dish

and let us know how it goes . . .

Okra Preservation:
There are two ways that this is most easily done, pickling or freezing.

To freeze you need to slice of the stems and blanch. { L I N K }

You can do an easy short lasting (2 weeks) refrigerator okra pickle with dill, { L I N K }

or do a hot water bath pickling process for year-round storage. { L I N K }

Now is the time to start planting okra. You can plant until the end of July. Plant it your self, have us plant it for you, or have us deliver okra transplants. Whatever you choose I highly recommend adding it to your garden!

If this were a normal year, a visit to my personal gardens would find tomatoes up to my knees and peppers popping out of every cranny. This is not a normal year, and I am very sadly devoid of both tomatoes AND peppers. You don’t have to be, though!

It’s feeling pretty darn Springish here in Austin, I feel confident in recommending that both peppers and tomatoes, plus cucumber seeds and other summer fare can be planted NOW. Peppers like a lot of sun and fertilizer. I like to drench my peppers bi weekly with fish emulsion or “John’s Recipe” liquid fertilizer. Hot peppers get hotter if given a bit of abuse, so plant them somewhere that won’t get a ton of irrigation all the time. Once the plant is established and setting fruit, let the soil almost dry out before watering. This stress will add the heat you want out of that Concho or Mucho Nacho Jalapeno. Fertilize with a nitrogen based fertilizer and compost at planting and a few weeks thereafter.

Peppers don’t suffer from as many pests as tomatoes, but watch out for leaf footed bug nymphs and nip them in the bud. Simply hold a dish of soapy water under the cluster of orange-red baby bugs and knock them into it while chuckling maniacally.  I leave about half the nymphs i find in my certified wildlife habitat garden, as there are always baby anoles stalking the nasty buglets.

When planting your peppers, don’t attempt the ‘bury it up to its neck’ technique that you use for planting tomatoes. Peppers won’t send out new roots from their stem like tomatoes will. Plant them to their seedling leaves and no deeper. Peppers also won’t get quite as big as tomatoes, so you can plant them closer together. They will still require staking, and may benefit from some pruning. Their white flowers are lovely, and the fruits even lovelier. I’m still noshing on last year’s harvest, put by in my freezer. You can freeze peppers raw without blanching: simply pop them into a ziplock bag, label and toss in the freezer for enjoyment for months to come. They’re easy to chop when frozen and bring the taste and heat of Summer back into many a Wintery meal.

written by ~ Miranda

Its time to get those tomatoes in the ground!!! You don’t want to wait too long… Tomatoes will only produce fruit when the highs our below 95 degrees. The plant will continue to grow through our hot summers and then start bearing fruit again in the fall. But if you want tomatoes this spring you better get planting.

Most Central Texas Gardeners begin planting the second week of March. You have to cover them 2 – 5 times due to flukey chilly days, but planting early will guaranty productive plants all through the season. Give them a leg up, and they’ll give you as much fruit as you can stand!

Here some tips…

Enjoy the fruits of your labor! Now, get out in that garden – it’s just too pretty to stay inside!

written by ~ Rebekah Allen plants@yardfarmaustin.com