Tobacco Tea for Insect Control

Yeah, I know, the organic crowd doesn't condone the use of tobacco tea because it kills indiscriminately, but it is an effective control of insects when used right.

To get started, I have grown my own tobacco. I bought seeds from a company in Canada, and grew the plants in our home garden beds. As you can see the plants are actually very attractive as an addition to the garden, especially as they went to flower...beautiful clusters of pink blossoms (shown above). After flowering, I pulled the entire plants out of the ground, hacked the roots off and hung the remaining plants upside down in our garden shed to dry. I left them drying over the winter. In the early spring I pulled the dryed leaves off and stored them in a coffee can for later use.

To make my tobacco tea, I take a well packed cupfull of leaves and place them into an old sun-tea brewing pitcher and let it steep in the sun for a "while"...and hour or two, or if I forget, longer. I transfer the mix into a plastic spray bottle for use. I have heard that the mix will remain effective for several weeks. Also, some recommend the addition of a drop or two of liquid soap as a wetting agent.

Tobacco teas agent of death is the nicotine. I am not certain, but I believe that its mechanism of demise is through an attack on the nervous system of the contacted pest.

I have only used the tea on young plants to protect them against various soft-bodied pests and on fire ants. I am reluctant to use it on plants that are already in fruit of veggie production because of the toxicity even though what I have read indicates that the toxicity of the tea is short-lived.

For fireants, I just pour a little of the mix straight onto the mound, and the spray some of the little #^@**'s as they scramble out to see who is messing with them. One of life's pleasures....killing fire ants.

If a person is desiring to use the stuff, please take appropriate safety precautions...wear rubber gloves, long sleeves, etc, and don't spray when it is windy and only use as a spot treatment.

Here are a few links with some data, facts and discussion on tobacco tea.

Link One
Link Two
Link Three
Link Four

Swiss Chard

Swiss Chard is one of my garden favorites. It is easy to grow, very productive, produces for an extended length of time, and is a very nutritious green.

Gardening in Texas can be a challenge. We can go from cold winter to hot summery conditions literally in a day...and then back to wintery. But Swiss Chard seems to handle whatever is thrown at it, except for high winds. Winds can destroy a portion of the tall leafy plant, but they seem to bounce back pretty quick.

Last fall I planted several varieties in a couple of different beds. I planted the colored variety, but only the red-stemmed ones grew from the package I planted. Also, I planted a smooth leaved variety and it has done quite well. But, the one that has done the best, and that I like to harvest and enjoy the most frequently in the variety Fordhook Giant (the plant on the left in the picture above). For an individual, or even a couple, unless you are eating Swiss Chard frequently, you can probably get by with one or two plants. And, if you don't have room in the garden, they are an attractive plant...just plant some in your landscape areas for an edible landscape plant.

We were eating Swiss Chard at least weekly from about December on, and continue to harvest off of the plants. We harvest young leaves and mix them in with various salad greens and enjoy raw. But, my favorite way to prepare them is as boiled mixed greens. I would harvest a few mustards, collards, and maybe some kale along with the Swiss Chard and cook them in a pot of water with a little butter and bacon fat, a couple of buillion cubes, some garlic powder and red pepper flakes. About 15 to 20 minutes of cooking and man, are they good.

And good for you:

Swiss chard is an excellent source of vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, magnesium, manganese, potassium, iron, vitamin E and dietary fiber. It is a very good source of copper, calcium, vitamin B2, vitamin B6 and protein. In addition, Swiss chard is a good source of phosphorus, vitamin B1, zinc, folate, biotin, niacin and pantothenic acid. Link

If you like greens and have never tried Swiss Chard, do yourself a favor and put them in your garden. You can't miss.

Broccoli Harvest

I am harvesting some of the broccoli that I began transplanting in mid-February. These were transplants that I started from seed, and most were fairly to very spindly when I put them out.

The bed they went into was a raised bed filled with a planting mix that was not really broken down enough, compost-wise, to allow plants to grow well last year, but we had hoped the winter brought some improvement. A good dose of high nitrogen fertilizer seemed to help.

We also had many very windy days, blowing one day from the north and then turning around and hurrying back from the south. Wind speeds of 40 to 45 miles per hour, and with higher gusts, were noted on several days. Even though I tried to keep a row cover over many of the plants, the leggy little plants were tested in the wind, and several failed, breaking off in the high winds.

In total, I guess I put out about 25 plants. I am down to about 12 to 15 remaining. Some of the crowns actually look pretty good now and I have harvested a couple. I hope to get several more harvested before the heat gets intense as it already has several days, or before the aphids find them and take over the crop.

The New(est) Beds

Due to an ever expanding list of "must grows" I am building some new raised garden beds and, lying outside of our fenced backyard area, tempting fate of critter incursions, though a six foot deer fence just erected should slow down most of them.

The new beds are being built of stone collected off of our property. All hand selected, or as the case may be, pretty much just picking up rocks and making them work. I am mortaring the beds, which is considerable work, but what the heck, and old guy needs to have some physical labor from time to time.

The photo shows the completed bed number one and the beginnings of bed number two, with the 1600 gallon rainwater tank in the background...so you can see there is a decent drop in elevation from the tank to the beds for water pressure purposes.

The first bed is about 25 feet in length and around 7 feet in outside width. The others will be the same width but will decrease slightly in length due to the alignment of the barn to the house being slightly off from one another...whatever.

It took about 23 sacks of mortar to build the first bed. Mixing a half sack at a time, it felt like that is about all that I was doing...lay a couple of rocks, mix mortar, lay a couple of rocks, mix mortar. It would have probably been cheaper in the long run to use a load of sand and masonry cement rather than the premixed mortar, but it is easier to just open a little bag and be ready to mix what I need then and there rather than fussing over how much to mix.

We wanted these beds to be able to plant more "spawly" things, like tomatillos, melons, berries, okra and stuff like that. So far in the first bed that is pretty much what is in there. Green tomatillos, purple tomatillos, Navajo blackberries, three okra varieties, eggplant and soon to be in there is Malabar spinach - a viney spinach-like plant that can get to 10 feet in length and can survive the Texas summer heat. For the next bed completed I have some cantelope seeds starting in pots, and we will also put in watermelon and pumpkins, and if there is room blackeyed peas.....

....maybe three or four beds won't be enough, maybe I better start planning for five?

The Drip Irrigation System

After becoming very tired of lugging around hoses, and the inordinate amount of time that it takes to keep a garden properly watered here in perpetual drought country, we have gone drip.

We put in a system composed of T-tape, with all the various fittings that it takes to bring the water to the plants. The T-tape that we are using has an emitter every twelve inches that puts out about one third of a gallon of water per hour. It can be used either on the surface of the ground or buried up to a couple of feet deep - though I don't know why a backyard gardener would ever need to bury it that deep. We have used the surface of the ground application for ease. The tape is held in position by metal stakes placed, well, wherever we felt we needed to put one.

For our gardens, we purchased 1000' of the actual drip tape, 100' of the poly pipe that the tape hooks in to, and a bag full of the various fittings needed to put it all together. It also required the purchase of an in-line pressure regulator to bring the water pressure down to 10psi whenever we use water from our well. Water from our rain tanks doesn't appear to need a regulator since there is no pump attached to the rain harvesting system (at this time). Total cost of the supplies was under 150 bucks...and we have plenty of the T-tape left to do more beds.

The photo above shows the connection that I have concocted to hook into our newest beds. I am currently in the process of building what will be either three or maybe four beds outside of our backyard area. The beds are directly below our 1600 gallon rain tank and ideally situated to use the rainwater. The three (or four) beds will all be plumbed together with 3/4 inch PVC pipe so that only one hose attachment (the one above) is necessary to water any one of the beds. I can turn on or off the 3/4 inch ball valves to water whichever bed I need to, and eliminate the need to drag hoses between the beds, further simplifying the watering process...ok, so it was my wife's idea initially, but it was my design.

So far we have been getting just enough rain to where we haven't had to use the irrigation system much, but when we have it seemed that three hours gave the area a decent soaking. Two hours may be just about enough. Hopefully we will get some rain this summer so that the rainwater tanks can handle the bulk of our supplemental watering.