Suckers & Scapes
June is when the garden starts to really come to life - and that includes all aspects of the garden! Sure, your lettuce heads might finally look like they’re large enough for a full salad, but the weeds are starting to show themselves too. This is the time when you should start building good habits that will last throughout the growing season and set you up for success right off the bat. Mindful preventative care will ensure that your garden stays manageable and productive for the whole season.
This post is focused on two June events:
getting into the habit of pruning your tomatoes, and
reaping the first reward for exorcizing in patience that is growing garlic.
They require similar work and attention to detail (I always miss at least 5 scapes)
Pruning Tomatoes
Though I know that some people don’t generally bother with tomato pruning in their own garden, I ask that community gardeners consider this issue with the following in mind;
Staking a tomato without drilling into the side of the bed seems easy when they’re 10 inches tall, but once that plant is 5ft or more, it is an unruly beast if it hasn’t been trained properly.
We ask that you keep your plants and tools within the boundary of your garden box, unpruned tomatoes have a habit of sneaking outside and dropping precious fruits onto the ground (our woodchucks don’t need any more temptation).
Disease can spread pretty quickly in a small space and pruning your tomato plants will give them better airflow and more sunlight which would result in better productivity over a longer period of time.
In the space between the stem and each leaf, as well as sometimes at the end of a flowering branch, you’ll see the tomato putting out a secondary branch. Simply pinch these off with your fingers or snip them with a pair of pruners.
Garlic Scapes
Growing Garlic takes quite a long time. You plant cloves in the fall, allow them to overwinter, watch them eagerly as they pop up in the spring (seriously, so exciting how does anything survive New England winters), and then you can’t harvest them until mid-summer when the leaves begin to yellow and the visible part of the plants start to look pretty sad. However, to sustain us in our garlic needs until that time we have the scape.
The garlic scape is the flowering portion of a hard-neck garlic plant. While it struggles to produce a true flower that allows it to reproduce on its own, it does offer up a tasty, spicy preview of the garlic bulb to come! Snap off the stem of the scape right where it emerges from the stalk of the plant and use it as you would a clove of garlic.