Published: May 06, 2008 03:05 pm            

Plant warm season vegetables now

Get out and enjoy the 80 degree temperatures today. This is the time to plant tomatoes, beans, sweet corn and other warm season vegetables.

The rule of thumb that I use for Boone County vegetable gardening is to wait until the first week of May; if the five-day outlook looks good, I get those warm season crops in the ground. Cool season crops can tolerate some frost and grow best in cool temperatures, do well when planted around the middle of April. Examples of cool season crops are leaf lettuce, peas, cabbage, beets, broccoli, cauliflower and spinach.

The real heat-loving vegetables such as sweet potatoes, melons and cucumbers do just as well and sometimes better if they’re not planted until the middle of May, when soil temperatures are even warmer than they are now.

great blooms

This has been a great spring for an outstanding show of flowering trees and shrubs. In April, pink saucer and star magnolia, PJM rhododendron, spicebush and Cornelian cherry started the show in Boone County.

Currently, redbud, white and pink flowering dogwoods are blooming to perfection. Crabapples, fruit tree apples and pears are blooming. The sweet scented wild plums in the woodlands have just finished blooming. Mushroom hunting has yielded some nice finds of snakeheads and gray sponge in the past week. With the warm weather early this week, the yellow sponge mushrooms should be making their appearance any day now.

backyard poultry

A “Backyard Poultry” educational program was recently held at the Boone County 4-H Fairgrounds. The event was attended by more than 100 persons.

Participants learned the basics of raising chickens in suburban as well as rural areas. The event featured information on selecting a chicken breed, with various displays of breeds. Raising healthy chickens, feeding, and predator prevention were some of the topics of the evening program. Several movable chicken coops were on display, built by local resident Jon Randle. The program was coordinated by Purdue Extension Boone County; Indy Sustainable Food Alliance and Central Indiana Organics.

— Doug Akers, an Extension Educator at the Boone County Cooperative Extension office, may be reached at (765) 482-0750 or dakers@purdue.edu.

        

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