In the garden this week (Sept. 3, 2026), if your lawn has a few bare or thin areas, now is a good time to reseed them. The cooler temperatures and typically more favorable moisture conditions of fall can give new grass a chance to establish before winter.
If you’re thinking about starting over or changing the type of grass in an area, consider a drought-tolerant grass mixture of buffalo grass and blue grama grass. Both are native prairie grasses and are well adapted to the conditions we often experience in South Dakota.
A buffalo grass and blue grama mix can provide good drought tolerance and handle plenty of foot traffic. Another bonus? These grasses generally don’t require as much mowing as some traditional lawn grasses. That could mean more time enjoying your yard and less time pushing the mower!
Since we’re talking about lawns, don’t put that mower away just yet! Keep your mower height at about 4 inches or even a little higher. Taller grass provides more leaf surface area, allowing the plant to produce more food through photosynthesis. Those nutrients are important as the grass develops and stores energy in its roots in preparation for winter.
This becomes especially important if we end up having a warm and dry winter. A healthy root system with good energy reserves gives your lawn a better chance of coming through winter in good shape and getting off to a strong start next spring. So, resist the temptation to give the lawn one last short haircut. Taller is better this time of year!
Right on schedule, fall webworms are showing up again.
The adult moth lays its eggs on the outer branches of trees. Once the eggs hatch, the small caterpillars begin feeding and create a web around themselves. The web provides protection as they grow.
While fall webworm nests can certainly be unsightly, the good news is that they generally don’t cause serious harm to healthy, established trees.
If you don’t want the webs hanging in your trees, you can simply remove them. A broom handle, pole, or similar tool can be used to pull the webbing and caterpillars out of the tree.
One important tip: Don’t stand directly underneath the nest when you’re removing it! You may get a few unwanted visitors dropping down on you.
If there was one weed that seemed to have a particularly good year, it was sandburs in the garden. Those painful little seed heads can become a real nuisance, especially around waste areas, roadsides, pastures, gardens. and prairie areas. If you have sandburs on your property, fall is a good time to start reducing the problem for next year.
Remove as many of the plants and seed heads as possible before they have a chance to spread even more. The fewer seeds that make it into the soil, the fewer plants you’ll have to deal with next year.
Next spring, consider using a preemergence herbicide labeled for sandbur control, such as Prowl, which is water-based, where appropriate and according to the product label. Preemergence products work by preventing weed seeds from successfully germinating, so timing is important.
Always read and follow the herbicide label, and make sure the product is labeled for the specific site and use before applying it, especially in the garden.
Night sky this week, summer may still be bringing us plenty of heat, but the nights are slowly getting longer, and the first hints of fall are already on the way. That makes this a great time to spend a few minutes outside after dark and see what’s happening overhead.
🌙 Evening Sky: Venus Steals the Show in the Night Sky this Week
Venus continues to dominate the evening sky. It’s incredibly bright and will usually be the first planet, and often the first “star” you’ll notice after sunset.
Look toward the western sky shortly after sunset and watch for Venus as the sky begins to darken. Because it’s so bright, it’s easy to spot even from town. Venus is sometimes called the Evening Star, although it’s actually a planet and doesn’t produce its own light. The brightness comes from sunlight reflecting off its thick clouds.
Venus is also a fun planet to compare with the stars around it. Stars tend to twinkle because their light has to travel through Earth’s atmosphere, while planets usually shine with a steadier light. Once you notice the difference, you’ll start recognizing planets much more easily.
If you have a telescope, Venus can be especially interesting because, like the Moon, it goes through phases. Depending on its position relative to Earth and the Sun, you may see Venus looking like a tiny crescent or a small, nearly round disk.
🌅 Morning Planets
The real planetary lineup comes before sunrise this week, so if you’re an early riser, set the alarm a little earlier and take a look.
☿ Mercury: The Elusive Planet
Mercury makes a short appearance low in the eastern sky about an hour before sunrise. Look near Gemini, to the right of the bright stars Castor and Pollux.
Mercury is one of the more difficult planets to spot because it never strays very far from the Sun in our sky. That means there’s only a short window when it’s visible before sunrise or after sunset.
If you want to find it, choose a location with a clear, unobstructed view of the eastern horizon. Trees, buildings, and hills can easily hide this little planet.
Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system and the closest planet to the Sun. Temperatures on its surface swing dramatically between scorching hot days and extremely cold nights because it has almost no atmosphere to hold onto heat.
🔴 Mars: The Red Planet
Look toward the upper right of Mercury to find Mars.
Mars isn’t nearly as bright as it was earlier this year, but its distinctive reddish-orange color makes it relatively easy to identify. The color comes from iron minerals in the planet’s surface that have essentially rusted over billions of years.
Mars is also home to several robotic explorers, making it one of the most closely studied worlds beyond Earth. When you look at that tiny reddish point before sunrise, you’re looking at another planet in our solar system that humans are actively exploring with spacecraft and rovers.
🪐 Saturn: The Ringed Wonder
Saturn is one of the highlights of the morning sky. It rises before midnight, so you don’t have to get up at an unreasonable hour to see it.
Look toward the southern sky during the early morning hours for a steady, yellowish-golden point of light. Saturn doesn’t twinkle as much as the stars around it, making it fairly easy to recognize once you know where to look.
Saturn’s magnificent rings are becoming more favorably tilted toward Earth, giving us nice views of this famous feature. Even a small backyard telescope can reveal the rings, and under good conditions you may even be able to make out Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
Saturn is enormous compared with Earth — more than 750 Earths could fit inside it by volume. Yet the planet is mostly hydrogen and helium and is actually less dense than water. If you could somehow find a bathtub big enough, Saturn would float!
🟢 Uranus: A Challenge for Binoculars
If you’re looking for a little more of a challenge, try finding Uranus.
It’s located between Aldebaran and the Pleiades star cluster, although you’ll probably need binoculars to have much chance of spotting it. Uranus is far too faint to stand out like Venus, Mars or Saturn.
Through binoculars, Uranus may appear as a tiny, subtle blue-green point of light. Don’t expect to see a large disk — it’s a distant world more than 1.6 billion miles from the Sun.
Uranus is also an unusual planet. It rotates on its side, with its axis tilted about 98 degrees. Scientists think a massive collision early in the planet’s history may have caused this extreme tilt.
And here’s a fun fact: Uranus has rings, too! They’re much fainter and harder to see than Saturn’s famous rings, but they’re there.
✨ Constellation of the Week: Scorpius
One of the unmistakable signs of summer is Scorpius climbing into the southeastern sky. It really does look like a giant scorpion, with curved claws and a long, sweeping tail.
Its brightest star, Antares, has a beautiful reddish-orange glow. The name Antares actually means “rival of Mars,” because ancient skywatchers noticed how similar the two looked in color.
Greek mythology has a story for Scorpius, too. According to the legend, the giant scorpion was sent to defeat the mighty hunter Orion. Zeus eventually placed them on opposite sides of the sky so they would never meet again. That’s why when Scorpius is rising on summer evenings, Orion is already below the horizon.
Just east of Scorpius you’ll find Sagittarius, the Archer. While the constellation is supposed to represent a centaur with a bow, most of us probably recognize its stars as something much simpler — the Teapot.
Once you find the Teapot, look for the “steam” rising from its spout. That points toward one of the richest parts of the night sky — the Milky Way.
🌌 Look Toward the Milky Way
As the sky gets darker, the Milky Way stretches overhead like a faint, hazy river of light. If you can get away from town and find a spot with little light pollution, it’s one of the most spectacular sights of a summer night.
And that hazy band isn’t a cloud. It’s the combined light of billions of stars in our own galaxy.
When we look toward Sagittarius, we’re looking in the direction of the center of the Milky Way, about 26,000 light-years away. Hidden in that region are glowing nebulae, ancient star clusters, and countless other objects that can be explored with binoculars or a telescope.
So, if you get a clear evening this week, grab a lawn chair and spend a few minutes looking up. Whether you’re watching brilliant Venus after sunset, finding Saturn before midnight, spotting Mars and Mercury before sunrise, or taking on the challenge of finding distant Uranus, there’s plenty to see.
And if you happen to get away from the town lights, don’t forget to look up at the Milky Way, too. Summer nights have a wonderful way of reminding us just how incredible our universe really is. 🌠
I’ve been getting quite a few questions about tomatoes lately, so let’s start in the garden this week.
One problem gardeners are noticing is small worms tunneling into green tomatoes. These are tomato fruit worms, and they can grow to about an inch long. Unfortunately, once they get inside the fruit, there’s not much you can do except pick them off when you find them. Checking your plants every day or two is the best defense.
Another tomato pest making an appearance is the tomato hornworm. If you’ve ever walked out to the garden and wondered where half the leaves went overnight, this is probably the culprit! These big green caterpillars can strip a plant in a hurry and will also take bites out of your tomatoes. They’re surprisingly well camouflaged, so look carefully along the stems and undersides of leaves. The easiest control is simply picking them off by hand, especially in the evening when they’re more active. Eventually, these hornworms transform into the large sphinx moths you may see flying around at dusk.
Some gardeners have also noticed little white bumps forming on tomato stems. Don’t worry, those are adventitious roots. Tomatoes naturally produce these along their stems, and if the stem comes into contact with the soil, those bumps will grow into roots. It’s perfectly normal and actually helps the plant if it’s buried deeper.
If you’ve been hearing the loud chorus of cicadas lately, you’re not alone. There’s an old saying that once the cicadas start singing, the first frost is about six weeks away. While it’s a fun bit of folklore, their singing really just marks the mating season. The males call to attract females for about five or six weeks, and despite all the noise, they cause very little damage.
For those of you growing hollyhocks, you may be seeing brown or rusty-colored bumps on the leaves. That’s hollyhock rust, a common fungal disease. It usually won’t seriously harm the plant, although it can make it look a little rough by the end of the season. If you’ve had problems with it in previous years, begin applying a fungicide early next spring and repeat applications as directed. Keeping the grass mowed around your hollyhocks also helps, since grass blades can spread the fungal spores.
Finally, I’ve been seeing quite a bit of chlorosis this year on certain trees and shrubs. The leaves turn yellow while the veins stay dark green. I like to joke that it’s just the “yellow variety” of the plant, but the real cause is an iron deficiency brought on by our alkaline soils. A foliar iron spray can help green up the leaves temporarily, but it won’t solve the underlying problem. For a long-term fix, adding sulfur to the soil can help lower the soil pH and make iron more available. Just remember, it isn’t an overnight solution. It may take three to five years to see significant improvement.
As always, if you’re seeing something unusual in your garden, don’t hesitate to message me. Chances are your neighbors are seeing the same thing!
