For many gardeners, a vegetable garden is just  not complete without a tomato plant or two. Based on sales at local  garden centers, folks in this area love their tomatoes!

Ask long-time gardeners for their favorite varieties  of tomatoes and you will nearly always hear a laundry list of heirloom  varieties. Most gardeners are growing tomatoes for the taste — that  wonderful taste of summer that you just won’t get from a grocery-store  tomato. And, when it comes to taste, the heirloom varieties are among  the  best tomatoes you can grow.

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Photo courtesy havankevin/Flickr

Garlic is almost universally despised by pest insects, probably because of it’s smell.  It offends a wide range of pests, including Japanese beetles, vegetable weevils, spider mites, aphids, whiteflies, Mexican bean beetles, and vine borers.

One of the easiest methods of pest control is to interplant garlic with your plants.  It’s a particularly good companion with lettuce or beets because those plants help cool the soil around the garlic during summer heat.  Don’t plant garlic with beans or peas.

Garlic is also recommended as a companion plant for potatoes to deter Colorado potato beetles.  Just put a line of garlic around your potatoes when you’re planting.  It’s also recommended to plant around vulnerable plants as fungal control.  For example, it’s recommended to plant 4 garlic bulbs about 6″ away from a rose bush in a circle to protect the rose from fungal diseases.

You can also make a garlic spray to spray on plants. If you spray it on your plants before the pests appear, it works to keep them away.

You’ll notice a garlicky odor when you first apply the spray, but the smell disappears when it dries.  It doesn’t affect the flavor of vegetables and is completely safe for vegetable gardens.

There are a lot of formulas for garlic sprays available online, or you can purchase it ready made.  Here’s one you can make yourself:

Garlic Spray: Take 2-3 whole garlic bulbs, separate the bulbs into cloves, but don’t peel the cloves. Put the cloves into a blender or food processor with 1 cup of water and chop well.  (You can also use garlic leaves instead of cloves.) Add 3 cups more water and 4-5 drops of dishwashing liquid and blend until liquefied (takes several minutes).  Strain the mixture through cheesecloth to get rid of anything that might clog your sprayer; it’s a good idea to strain twice.  Store the concentrate in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid until you want to use it.  To use it, dilute 1/4 cup of concentrate in 2-1/2 cups of water (10:1 ratio), then put it in a pump spray bottle or pressure sprayer.  You can also apply it to the soil to discourage nematodes.

You can also liquefy some garlic cloves in water, strain it, and add it to other insect or garden-disease sprays.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Per wd’s request, here’s some good sprays you can mix up yourself.

Compost Tea: good as a fertilizer and can also help prevent plant diseases.  Put 1-1/2 gallons of fresh compost (or manure) into a sack and tie the open end closed.  Put the sack into a 5-gallon bucket and pour 4-1/2 gallons of warm water over the top to submerge it.  Cover the bucket and allow the tea to steep for 3-7 days.  Pour the solution into a watering can and apply to plants.

Hot Pepper Spray: The taste and smell of hot pepper will repel many pests, from insects to squirrels.  Note that the active ingredient in hot pepper, capsaicin, can irritate the skin and eyes, so use care when making or applying this spray.  Crush 7 cloves of garlic and add it to 1 tablespoon powdered cayenne pepper in a heat-proof container.  Pour 3 cups hot (not boiling) water over and stir to combine completely.  Allows the mixture to steep for 2-3 days, then strain and pour into a hand-held sprayer.

Baking Soda Spray: to prevent or manage black spot, powdery mildew, and other plant diseases.  Combine 1-1/2 tablespoons baking soda and 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in 1 cup of warm water, and stir until the baking soda is dissolved.  Add the mixture to 1-1/2 gallons warm water and stir until blended, then pour into a sprayer and use immediately.

Citrus Spray: controls many types of insects and smells great! Grate the rinds of 2 lemons and 1 orange and put them in a heatproof container.  Pour 1 quart of boiling water over the rinds, then cover and steep until cool.  Strain into a hand-held sprayer and apply.

Prepare to be jealous!

Photo courtesy Bruce Feldberg

Bruce Feldberg of Riverside Nursery in Salem emailed me to show me pictures of his tomatoes.  He is an avid vegetable gardener himself, and he harvested his first tomatoes of the season yesterday – Park’s Whoppers, which he grows in single stalks on trellises.  Very impressive!

Bruce also told me that Riverside Nursery began in 1989 as a resurrection of the Jobe Florist Greenhouses, which date back to the early 1900s, he thinks.  He saw some parallels between his business and that of Crow’s Nest, that I wrote about Saturday.

If you’re in Salem, Bruce invites you to stop by and visit Riverside.  He’s located at 2306 W. Riverside Dr.

Photo courtesy Bruce Feldberg

Before Jay Smith started Crow’s Nest Greenhouses as the business it is today, there was Crows Nest Farm and Greenhouses. Charlie O’Dell, the original owner, emailed me to give me some history. Here’s what he wrote:

My wife, Wilmoth O’Dell, founded and began operating Crows Nest Farm and Greenhouses back in 1972, at 1859 Brooksfield Road in Prices Fork. She retired from her greenhouses in 1995 after 23 continuous years growing and retailing greenhouse plants including annual flowers, perennial flowers, vegetable plants, hanging baskets and Christmas Poinsettias, with the part-time help of our 2 daughters and many Va. Tech students whom she hired through the years.

In 1996, Jay began renting her greenhouses, which he did for 8 years. By this time he had increased the business to where he needed more growing space and we needed more parking space for customers!

When he purchased the residence and acreage around the corner from us on Brooksfield Road, we agreed to let him continue our name of ‘Crows Nest Greenhouses’ at his new location, as it was already a thriving business so well known in the area, both from my wife’s many years of retail plant sales here, also from our U-Pick berries business that we sold in 2011, and from Jay’s good greenhouse work while here for 8 years.

So, in reality, Crows Nest business did not begin with Jay in the late 1990′s as you stated in your article, but in 1972. Were it not for Wilmoth’s many years of hard work founding and building this business, plus Jay’s hard work and expansion of this business, it would not be here today.

Thank you for letting folks know the history of Crows Nest Greenhouses. 

Thanks Charlie!

For those interested in what became of the U-Pick berry business, that became 3Birds Berry Farm, and it’s located just down the street from Crow’s Nest.  Blueberries, blackberries and raspberries are available for picking in the summer.  Check their website for picking schedules.

Sisters Janet Vaughn and Sherry Bishop own Vaughn’s Nursery in Dublin, another garden center that grows a large part of what it sells.

Vaughn’s has two acres with several greenhouses for growing perennials, annuals, vegetables and herbs.  They also grow some shrubs on another piece of property.  In all, they grow about 80% of all the plants they sell.  They also offer landscaping design and installation services.

Sherry Bishop shared this tip with me, as one example of why she thinks buying a locally grown plant is better: “The big box stores put growth retardant on some of their plants,” she said.  “It’s hard for a plant to come out that, so our plants are likely to grow faster and bigger.”

She acknowledges that it’s hard to both grow the plants and retail them, and says it would be easier to just order weekly and let someone else do the growing.  But, like others in this business, she’s in it for the love of growing plants.

Vaughn’s Nursery is located at 4801 Cleburne Blvd. in  Dublin.

Here’s another local nursery that grows almost all of what it sells.

Third Day Nursery, in Christiansburg, has a huge selection of annual flowers, herbs and vegetables, all of which they grow themselves.  They also carry Proven Winner annuals, hanging baskets for sun and shade, rose bushes, a few perennials and some shrubs.

The owner, Doug Walsh, has been in business for 30 years. Visit and you’re likely to find him in one of the greenhouses, caring for the plants.

Walsh acknowledges that there aren’t many of the local nurseries left.  He said that this year has been particularly tough because of the strange weather, but since it finally warmed up, business has been brisk.

Since so much of their stock is in annuals, the nursery is only open from April 1 through July. The exact close date depends on the stock they have left.

Third Day Nursery is located at 3290 Roanoke St. in Christiansburg.

I moved here about four years ago from Cincinnati, a nice mid-sized city with good shopping, including some really nice garden centers.  For the most part, those garden centers had really good selections of very healthy plants at prices higher than the big box stores.  You shopped the garden centers because that’s where you could find plants that were a little out of the ordinary, and that’s where you could get your gardening questions answered.  Plus, they were merchandised so beautifully that they were a great source of inspiration.  There were some garden centers I would make a point of visiting in the spring because being there fed my soul.

A lot of people don’t realize that most garden centers don’t grow their own plants, and the fact that most don’t was my paradigm when I moved here.  I wrote about Crow’s Nest Greenhouses on Saturday; I first heard about them from the retired horticulture professor we purchased our house from, but didn’t actually visit until the spring following our move.

That spring, we had laid claim to the garden already cleared by the previous owner and had planted a lot of veggies I had started from seed.  I was over at one of the big box stores purchasing some seed and decided to go ahead and pick up a flat of marigolds for insect control.  I was reasoning that they were “just marigolds”, nothing special, and I didn’t want to pay the premium price at a garden center.  Back in Cincinnati, they would have been about 30% more expensive – better plants, mind you, but more expensive.

So, I got a big surprise when I then went to my first visit to Crow’s Nest and saw marigolds that were twice as big as those I bought for almost exactly the same price per plant.  “How does he afford to do that?” I asked, and found out he grew his own plants.

We are really lucky to live in an area where you can find garden centers growing their own plants.  The concept is a dying one across the country as the little guys succumb to the competition of the big box stores.  Now, nothing against those stores. Sometimes you come across a good plant that you can’t find anywhere else.  But, I do believe in buying locally when I can, and if I end up getting a bigger plant for the same money, the choice is a no-brainer.

So, keep the names of your favorites coming in, whether they grow their own plants or just source them locally or regionally.  I’d love to know about them!

Speaking of which, a reader from Salem, Sonny Campbell, emailed me about one of his favorites in Salem, Riverside Nursery.  He said the owner sells mostly plants they grow themselves and that they carry 70-80 varieties of heirloom tomatoes.  Sounds like a place to check out!

The locavore  movement has taken off with  foodies in recent years as folks balance their love of good eating with a  desire to be environmentally conscious. Have you ever considered that  the benefits of buying local extend beyond the tomato to the tomato  transplant?

Many garden centers actually grow very few of the  plants they sell, but instead purchase their plants from specialty  nurseries that do the growing. Plants may come from across the country  or, in this area, may come from local growers.

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Learn more about Crow’s Nest Greenhouse.

The planting is almost finished in my vegetable garden – yes, those tomatoes are now planted!  Just a few more seeds to plant, plus some sweet potato slips that are rooting in my kitchen, and that’s it, except for some more winter squash seeds that I need to start to replace the ones that died this week in the cold.  I’ll also plant some pumpkins in a few weeks so they are ready closer to Halloween.  Now, I need to get the beds mulched.

My perennial herbs have grown like crazy the last couple of weeks.  I’ve got a lemon balm shrub growing right now!

I decided to grow all my tomatoes on the trellis this year. (See the blog posting from last year on this.) They take up a lot less room this way, and it’s easier to just feed the vines through the netting instead of having to tie them to a stake.  Pruning is easier too.

The peas are up but only about 4 inches tall.  My broccoli and cabbage are doing fine, but they are growing slowly too.  The lettuce is doing great – we had our first salad a couple of nights ago.  I just noticed that there’s enough asparagus to pick for a meal too; that’ll be number four, so far.  I doubt I’ll get much more.  The tree falling on top of it last year does seem to have killed off a bunch of it.

I was outside this morning working in the garden and it was hot!  I’m hoping we get some kind of spring and don’t move straight into summer, but, at this point, I’m just happy to see the cold weather gone and to get to some real gardening!