This week in the garden, you may have heard the term “drought cold tolerance” floating around in garden circles lately? It’s basically about how winter damage can be worse when we don’t get enough snow to insulate plants and provide…
This week in the garden when your flowers and vegetables wind down, remove the dead plants to trash bags. This removes the potential overwintering fungus spores and insect eggs for next year. This also helps with aster yellows in the…
Oh, the joy of this week in the garden! This week’s uninvited but fascinating guest: the humble sow bug. You may have noticed them lounging under the mulch or your garden boards. Fun fact: sow bugs are like the distant…
I had to take a long time to mow in the garden this week because I had to pick up all the frogs and toads in the grass and put them in the flowerbeds. It is all good because they…
Tent caterpillars are showing up this week in the garden. The eggs hatch and the little caterpillars spin a group web on the end of a branch. As they grow the tent becomes bigger. They do this for their protection…
If you had a low fruit yield in the garden this week, this was probably due to the high temperatures. Pollen in many varieties becomes sterile when the temperature is above 90 degrees. Keep a list of the varieties that…
Some shrubs and lawns are yellowing in the garden this week. The leaf or blade is a yellow color with green veins. Iron chlorosis is a tie-up of iron in the soil due to higher temperatures. While the iron is…
A couple of things have been going on in the garden this week with the tomato fruits. One is the skin cracking. The cause is a sudden influx of water to the fruit causing it to expand splitting the skin.…
Let’s talk about a few garden things in the garden this week. Leave hail damage garden plants and flower plants alone. By now you should see what is dead or dying so remove them. Most plants will set leaves and…
Well, this week in the garden is becoming more stressful. My apple tree is slowly falling over (it will be removed this fall after harvest). Some squash plants died because of borers. The tomatoes have been hit by early blight.…
There are several bugs in the garden and flower beds making their appearance. First of all, the squash beetles, while not particularly problematic, the beetles do lay eggs on the undersides of the leaves. These eggs hatch and the borers…
This week in the garden, with the wet, cool weather a lot of fungus diseases are showing up. One is a scab in cucumbers and other vine crops. It appears on the leaves as a halo of yellow surrounding a…
There have been some questions in the gardens this week about strawberries turning black and shriveling (grey mold). This is a fungus called Botrytis which affects fruits, flowers, and sometimes leaves. It is worse in cooler, wetter weather also affecting…
Let’s have a chat about some common issues in gardens this week and how to tackle them! First off, if you’re growing cucumbers, there are two diseases you should be on the lookout for anthracnose and wilt. Anthracnose is a…
Aphids are coming to play this week. These are tiny, mostly green soft-bodied insects sucking out the plant juices. Many aphids are only plant-specific to the plant family they attack. Like rose aphids attack only plants in the rose family.…