Gardening

May 2000 Table of Contents

GARDENING
by Jack Hardy

May is the month when Bahamian vegetable gardeners must retrench and try to keep what they already have rather than sow new seeds. Most winter vegetables are impossible or difficult to grow in the warm weather of late spring and summer. To make up for the lack of veggies, watermelons should be ready to pick.

I suggest that, rather than let your vegetable garden go to weed in the summer, you lay down clear plastic sheeting over your garden. Soak the area well first and bury the edges of the plastic sheeting in a shallow trench. This will prevent wind blowing it away, but I offer no guarantees if another Floyd comes along.

The sun shining on the clear plastic sheeting will raise the temperature of the soil at a depth of several inches and prevent weeds growing. Weed seeds will also be baked, along with insect larvae and nematodes. The process is called solarisation and is used extensively by commercial agriculture ventures. Solarisation is cheap and organic and is just like sending your garden soil to a spa to recover. When you pull back the plastic sheets in September you'll have a weed-free garden ready to be fertilized and planted out for the winter growing season.

There will be no more Gardening articles until September. Here are your important jobs for the missing months:

June - Weed garden, mow lawn.
July - Weed garden, mow lawn, fertilize fruit & citrus trees.
August - Weed garden, mow lawn.

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