Dear Helen: Even though my few vegetable plots are small, I can usually find something green to pick and use in the fall and winter. This year, the sturdier greens — kale and purple-sprouting broccoli — are fine, but the chard is not standing up at all well to the heavy rains. In fact, the leaves seem to be disintegrating. What can be done? Are the plants doomed?
A.V.
Fall and winter vegetables with thick leaves like cabbages, broccoli and most types of kale stand up well to heavy rainfall. The thinner leaves of green vegetables like spinach and chard are more prone to damage in persistent, pounding rains like the ones we’ve had in this rather bizarre autumn.
One remedy would be to arrange clear plastic tunnelling over the chard. Otherwise, mulch around the plants to protect the crowns and roots. When the weather improves, they will regrow.
Dear Helen: I’ve begun gathering together some of the garden supplies I’ll need in the spring. I do a great deal of transplanting and wonder what solution you use in your own transplanting.
S.D.
I mix a dilute solution of fish and seaweed fertilizers combined. Both are available in liquid form, and seaweed can be found in convenient powdered form. I use the Organican dry seaweed from T&T Seeds.
Dear Helen: Was it just my neighbourhood, or were rats a common problem in gardens this past summer? Rats did a fair bit of damage to some of our root vegetables and fruits.
F.H.
Over the course of the summer I did hear of fairly widespread losses to rat feeding in different regions of the Island.
In recent years, growing food has been the prime focus of gardening families. Some of that food is bound to attract rats, and during a garden’s productive time it is difficult to lure rats to baits in traps when other delicious foods are abundant and easily accessible.
A gardener who lives near me had her trained peaches, nectarines and other fruits ravaged by rats in the summer. Another neighbour scatters seeds for birds over the ground — another powerful rat attractant.
A friend with plots in a community garden called the season a “ratty summer” for losses in most of the plots. Rats munched through all the beets. Squashes were hollowed out, tomatoes reduced to stems and scrawny strands of flesh.
During a fruitful summer, where rats are around, it can be difficult to protect everything from the nimble creatures. Careful sanitation, and keeping ripe fruit picked, can help.
Carrots and beets wintering in the cold storage of their garden plots are common targets of hungry rats. I keep my root vegetables covered with floating row cover until the top growth dies down. Then, after the plot is cleaned of withered foliage, a five-cm layer of soil over the roots helps to insulate them from severe cold and hide their presence. A cover of wire mesh secured over the bed provides further protection if it is needed.
Rat traps of various kinds are available. A friend has used an electrocution trap with success. For anyone deciding to try trapping, choose a trap the fits inside an enclosure that effectively bars entry to pets and birds.
Dear Helen: Is it true that kiwi fruit is good for heart health?
B.B.
From what I have been able to find, kiwi fruit is no magic bullet, but it is a nutritional powerhouse, a food that supports good health.
The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada includes kiwi in its list of vitamin C “dynamos.” The fruit’s high levels of dietary fibre and potassium support heart health.
In Superfoods: The Healthiest Foods on the Planet (Firefly, 2010), Tonia Reinhard includes kiwis among the 200 “superfoods” described. She writes about research that indicates kiwis are beneficial to cardiovascular health.
A University of Oslo study found that eating two to three kiwis a day significantly lowered the risk of blood clotting and reduced the amount of fat in the blood.
For several years I shared my kiwi harvest with a man who delivered firewood to my home. He was under the care of a cardiologist who recommended his patient eat at least one kiwi fruit a day. Please note, however, that beneficial foods like kiwis act as useful supports but do not replace appropriately prescribed medications.
