CORVALLIS — Freshly planted and carefully tended, vegetable gardens can quickly become a magnet for trouble. Problems seem to spring up overnight.
Weeds, for instance, can overtake a garden in days. Slugs munch on seedlings. Aphids suck the juices from any number of plants. And that white butterfly you see fluttering around? It’s a cabbage white butterfly that lays eggs that turn into voracious larvae.
If you haven’t planted yet, prepare the soil and then wait a week or two until weeds germinate. Get at them with a hoe when they are still small, about the time two true leaves appear. Wait until another wave of weeds appear, remove them and you’ll have a fairly clean slate for vegetables. Keep at emerging weeds until plants get big enough to shade them out…