Your gardening experts, Donna Balzer and Steve Biggs, chat about their new book No Guff Vegetable Gardening during the 2011 Calgary Garden Show at Spruce Meadows. In this video they chat about garden maintenance and how to harvest your crops! Visit them at, www.GardenCoachesChat.com
Foreign everybody loves Garden maintenance right wow I once had a lady say to me I don’t want to take up gardening I’ve heard you on CBC it’s all problems it’s all trouble and of course people only call in with their trouble they don’t call and say I had a 20 pound Harvest of
Parsnips last week no they never do that they always call in with trouble so Garden maintenance we we like to think it’s kind of like Garden psychology it is Garden psychology any couch potatoes out there I had a client once that said to me I’ve just retired I want you to design a
Garden for me that I’ll need to work on at least 40 hours a week it’s like really but most people maybe not quite so much so we uh love this picture because Mariko or illustrator’s mother is a psychiatrist so that’s her mother the carrot and this is Steven the coach potato
So you’re gonna have bugs it goes without saying small bugs grow up to be big bugs and um there’s lots of strategies you can use again if you use the floating row covers they’re going to be a very good cure or a way of avoidance I guess to keep bugs from
Getting onto your cabbage crops and things like this I mean I’m sure everybody recognizes the Cabbage moth larva the little black poops that they leave a lot of people think are seeds or they think are Maybe eggs eggs but they aren’t their poops and so we always talk about growing a
Few flowers in the vegetable garden it doesn’t have to be straight vegetables and so we have here some alyssum and why do we have the alyssum Donna because uh how many people buy bugs who likes to buy Bugs mailer nobody who’s bought ladybugs Stephen used to sell ladybug I used to
Sell ladybugs and they were they’d come in these burlap bags and they’d be 3 000 ladybugs or for the real keeners I think you could buy a 20 000 pack and the people would take them home let them out in the garden and they’d come
Back to me the next day and they’d say so they all flew away because I don’t know if you know the story behind ladybugs they’re all mostly wild collected in California where they overwinter so the first thing they’re going to be looking to do once they’re scraped up put in these burlap bags
Stored in a refrigerator and shipped to Calgary they’re going to be looking to get out and they’re going to be looking to do other things they’re going back to California so I say leave the willows leave the dandelions plan to list them because those ladybugs when they get out that
Your neighbors purchase are going to be looking for a place to go get some nectar because the nectar and the pollen are going to keep them strong and why do they need to be strong you want to make a romantic setting in the garden for these bugs
Have their little tasty tidbit of a listen nectar and maybe some pollen is they’re going to want to get out and they’re going to want to breed and then and then what are they going to do they’re going to lay their eggs so you’re going to be looking on your
Plants always on the underside because these are ladybug eggs now a lot of people will say I used I had some orange things on the bottom of my leaves but I squished them so we’re good right no those are your ladybug eggs these ones down below these are lace Wing eggs
Lacewings are on the long string and then a little white egg so my friend Joan took this picture I can hardly believe she got both on one leaf anyways the ladybugs will hatch out yeah and here’s a ladybug larva so it looks like a little um it’s like a
Little alligator it’s running around the leaf gobbling up aphids and I think there’s an aphid in this picture isn’t there though yeah somewhere down here they’re voracious anyway if you ever if you have a bad infestation of aphids go look for these and they move around quickly and they gobble up lots I
Actually took some from my mom’s Garden in BC and brought them home on WestJet they don’t even know half the things that are on WestJet I brought home the larvae and I put them in my greenhouse because I had bought some tomatoes that year I wanted to have
A wider range than I had room to start so I started eight kinds and bought two the two I bought had aphids on them and they spread to all the others so I borrowed some lady ladybug larva not the ladybugs from my mom but ladybugs aren’t
The only things the DVA fits I took this picture in my daughter’s Garden up in Edmonton this is a little aphid Midge or aphid Elites and these are found around the world so they’re positively here in Calgary although I took this picture in Edmonton they’re positively here just because they’re found internationally
And and don’t forget that bar of soap down there Donna so you might see there’s a bar of soap in the corner of this picture here and we put that up there because we disagree about soap now I like to use a little bit of insecticidal soap if I get a bad
Infestation of aphids in the garden and if it’s like using just a few seconds come on if you’re using soap you’re using soap I’m using soap I’m using soap well when those aphids move in and they start to polish off the broad Bean crop who has problems with aphids on broad
Beans here can I see I always get aphids on the broad beans who even likes broad beans oh a couple of people see Steve nobody likes broad beans come on who likes broad beans yeah oh thank you thank you so My Philosophy is if there’s lots of predators there and they’re going to
Take care of those aphids I’ll leave them but if I don’t see any predators and the aphids are getting bad I’ll spray the garden because I say to Donna if you want things totally natural go live in the woods well I say those larvae and things when you spray them with soap because
They’re very sensitive so I try not to if I have to if I have aphids and I can’t deal with it I try to just hose them off with water a strong stream of water because most of the ladybugs will still climb up whereas the aphids have
It looks like a a screw cap kind of a beak that goes into the plant and they’re actually imbibing they always say they’re sucking but they don’t actively suck they just let it come in when you hose them off it breaks off their poor little beef that sounds cruel
Well it is a bit cruel but the the soap would kill the honeybees and things so we’re just I’m not gonna go there anyway two different opinions because we can’t agree on everything finally Garden Harvest people ask these questions is there a certain day in October when we
Should Harvest everything we’re like no Harvest all along taste it taste it that’s the best way to tell if it’s ready so you’re not sure if that pot of peas is ready you can feel it see if it’s plump but if you’re not sure taste some same with the tomatoes here’s a
Green tomato so who would have guessed that’s right KOA knew that and this is Emma checking the crops we say check all the time something might not have been ready this morning and it’s ready this afternoon so you have to be it’s not like I mean you do buy those
Packages of peas at the grocery store that are all at the same size but they don’t actually grow that way in the garden you have to keep checking and maybe pick a few today at a few tomorrow and of course we give you tons of charts
When when it’s okay to pick when it’s too late to pick when you’ve blown it you have to just rototill it under so we give you you know a chart so that you know for every plant what to do so that’s it that’s it I think that’s the end of vegetable garden