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  (May) I have an above-ground garden, small, 4' by 8', with very rich soil. I grow large vegetables, but the neighborhood cats sometimes use the garden as a sand box. I try to keep it wet so they don't like it. I heard a program on NPR stating cats could carry a disease and kids should not play in their sandbox. Are we at risk eating the vegetables from my garden? Thanks.

  We do not like for pets to use gardens as litter boxes. You can deter cats by several methods. One is to use sweetgum balls as mulch. You can also take small sticks and place them upright near your plants. They also sell a plastic mulch with small spikes in it called cat away. Cats like to scratch when they use the bathroom, and they like a clean soil to scratch in. You can also buy motion sensors which squirt a spray of water -- which many cats detest.

  (September) I have a question about soil sterilization that maybe you could answer for me. I have had a problem with tomato blight for several years and have been told that this is a fungal disease in the soil. After this years crop I covered my garden with black plastic sheeting to sterilize the soil; only to read in a local newspaper article; that the correct way to do this was to use clear plastic. What gives? Is there really a preference as to using black versus white? Any comments on this would be greatly appreciated.

  While black plastic will generate some heat, clear plastic tends to work better since the light can also get through the clear and help to generate more heat when it is hot outside. We use the black plastic during the cooler months to smother out grass and weeds by excluding light, but it is a smothering process not a heat killing process then. If you use clear plastic when it is cool, you get a little greenhouse effect with the weeds growing more. I have also had several people ask if it is too late in the year for solarization to work. Although you will get some results by starting now, this is not ideal. Even though it is hot during the day, our nights are beginning to cool off. I don't think you will get the best effects now, since we recommend 6-8 weeks of solarization during the hottest months.

  (September) Explain this one, please. This morning my wife and I were sitting on our covered back porch when she looked up at the roof line and exclaimed, "What is THAT?" She made this exclamation rather incredulously because she was pretty sure she knew what it was. I should explain that I tend to let our gutters runneth over before removing the bounty of pine needles that accumulate there, and they were due for a routing. And it's not unheard of for certain weeds to take root and grow to healthy adulthood before being removed from our gutters. But this was no weed. What my wife spotted, and what I've since transplanted and am caring for (as if it needs it, considering where it was thriving previously), is, I am certain, a tomato plant, complete with several small oblong still-green tomatoes. Understand there's nothing below this gutter but a house and about 35 feet of vertical drop. There's nothing above it but some overhanging pine branches. Neither we, nor any of our neighbors, as far as we know, are otherwise growing tomatoes (not that that would explain anything). Any guess as to how that 'mater plant got on my roof? Birds? Vegetarian aliens?

  How interesting. My guess is either a squirrel or a bird, feasted on someone's tomato and then dropped the seed in your compost rich gutters, and voila, a tomato plant. In most seasons, I doubt it would have done as well as this one, but we have had good rains. From the sound of it, your gutters must runneth over with water-instead of carrying it down the drains, since they must be full of organic matter. Maybe you could start a new trend in gardening, instead of hanging baskets, you could have gutter gardens!

  (December) My brother-in-law spread cow manure over his garden place this summer and a vine came up with a lemon sized fruit. The vine grew everywhere and the leaves looked like a small cantaloupe leaf. The fruits started out green like a watermelon, but started turning yellow as they matured. The inside flesh is white, with seeds like a cantaloupe and a very bland taste. Do you have any idea what it is?

  Members of the Cucurbita family (squash, gourds, cantaloupes, watermelons, cucumbers, etc.) can cross-pollinate, and the resulting seed can produce some interesting off-spring. We often see wild vines in compost piles or near where people threw away spent melon rinds and seeds. I would say that some cows feasted on some type of Cucurbita, and passed some seeds which sprouted in the garden. Obviously, they aren't a wonderful edible, and hopefully, all of the fruits were harvested and destroyed this growing season, and you won't see any new plants next gardening season.

  Would you please tell me the names of vegetables that grow best in Arkansas. Anything that you can tell me about the soil, fertilizer and insect control would be helpful. As you can tell, I am starting a garden for the first time. I would like to plant cole crops, tomatoes, peppers, peas, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, onions, corn, okra and watermelons. Will these all grow here?

  All of the vegetables you mentioned will do nicely in Arkansas. Some of them are cool season crops, which can be planted from mid February through mid April, while the warm season crops shouldn’t go in the ground until at the earliest, mid April. Heat lovers like okra and southern peas prefer May. Make sure your soil is well drained and that the site gets a minimum of six to eight hours of sunlight a day. You can have your soil tested at your local county extension office. A good reference tool for you would be Extension’s book called Vegetable Gardening in Arkansas MP 128. This book is a bargain at only $7.00. To receive a copy in the mail, send a check for $7.00 made payable to Coop. Ext. Service, to: Coop. Ext. Service, Business Office, PO Box 391, Little Rock, AR 72203. Be sure to include your address, and you will receive it in the mail. It gives you general gardening information, as well as individual fact sheets on each vegetable.

  I have a small garden in my back yard in Little Rock and have had much success with tomatoes and other vegetables, but have had problems last year and this year with my peppers. I have a large compost tumbler that produces great compost, which I spread around the bases of my (18) tomato plants. I also spread it around eggplant and squash plants. After the growing season is over I pull up all my plants and then till the compost into the soil. Before planting each year I till in my last compost tumbler load that remained from the fall. The peppers are beautiful when transplanted. These are red, yellow, and green bells, sweet banana, and Jalapeno peppers. The new leaves that appear immediately after transplanting in my garden are severely deformed and tend to stunt the growth of the plant. The leaves are kind of buckled or wadded up instead of flat. Could my soil be too rich? I also noticed this year that I had an extraordinary amount of grubs in the soil and before planting picked out hundreds and hundreds of them. I also treated with Diazinon pellets which were tilled in with the initial compost load. The deformed leaves seem to bother the bell peppers more than the banana peppers. All the other vegetables seem to thrive and grow to enormous sizes, it's only the peppers. The same deformity occurred last year so I intentionally did not spread any compost around them for fear that the compost was burning them. I am at a loss on what to do. There's plenty of time to replant if that's what I need to do. Do I need to bring in a soil sample?

  The first question that I would ask is what is the pH of the soil in which they are being grown. Typically peppers are less sensitive than tomatoes to nutrient deficiencies but it is still worth checking. A Calcium deficiency at low soil pH can cause deformed and cupped leaves. I would recommend a soil sample. Take a pint of soil to your local county extension office. In two weeks you will receive a computer print out telling you the pH of your soil and the nutrient levels.

Rule out the nutritional problems first. Chances are that won’t be a problem. The most likely causes of your problem are A. A virus disease such as TMV (tobacco mosaic virus) or CMV both of which are common in peppers. Many Tomato cultivars are genetically resistant to TMV but no pepper cultivars are. TMV spreads rapidly when people who smoke handle the plants. B. Damage from aphids, this can cause deformed leaves and happens rapidly with just a few aphids on the apical meristem of the plant. You often see the damage before you see the aphids. For virus diseases there are no controls. For aphids, you can spray with insecticidal soap or malathion for control.

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