Three “bugs” are showing up in gardens this week. One is the cabbage butterfly. It is a white butterfly with a couple of black spots on the wings. The butterfly is harmless; however, they lay eggs on cabbage, broccoli, and…
Two problems are happening in tomatoes right now. One is leaf spot diseases whether early blight or Septoria (both are caused by fungi). Things to incorporate in your routine are to stake or use tomato cages to keep the plants…
I have received many questions about tomato leaves curling. The most common reason for this during this time of the year is environmental. It even has its own name: physiological leaf roll. The plant is growing rapidly and the roots…
With the spring rains and now the heat, many gardeners are having problems with perennial weeds in the flowerbed and garden like creeping Jenny (field bindweed) and thistles. The use of herbicides in the garden is not a choice, so…
Who is eating these tunnels in my carrots? They all called the carrot weevil. The adult in a tiny brown bug with a snout laying eggs on the crown of the carrot. The little white worms burrow down on the…
What is that big bunches of webs in my trees? It is fall webworms hatching from eggs and spinning a protection web over the colony. While unsightly, they do not cause much harm this time of the year as the…
Why do melons and tomatoes seem to crack when the fruit gets ripe? The cause is inconsistent soil water and heat. Do not let the soil dry completely then water. The surge of water in the fruit will expand causing…
Blossom end rot in tomatoes shows up a browning or blackening areas on the bottom of the fruit. It is more common than not on the first ripening tomatoes. Pepper and eggplant also get this condition, but to a lesser…
This week I am hearing about leaf miner injury in various plants. You look at the leaf and see tunnels winding around between the tissues of the leaf. I have not seen heavy infestations that skeletonize the plant, however, they…
I am noticing tents of caterpillars in fruit trees and other trees now. The adult moth lays eggs in a crotch of trees and the little caterpillars start spinning a web around the congregation. As they grow the tent becomes…
As long as there have been farmers and gardeners, there have been birds trying to eat their crops. And throughout the ages, farmers have tried to come up with ingenious ways to scare them off. Nowadays, scarecrows are familiar sights,…
It’s such a sinking feeling to have one’s garden pummeled by hail especially for farmers who lost crops. Anyways in a few days to a week you’ll probably get a good idea what is salvageable or not. It never looks…
We’re having a lot of trouble with diseases in tomatoes. Leaves turn brown from the bottom of the plant and move upward. Is it a blight or a wilt? We’ve moved the plants and rotated them to a new location…
Cedar apple rust is a fungal disease that requires juniper plants to complete its complicated two-year lifecycle. Spores overwinter as a reddish-brown gall on young twigs of various juniper species. In early spring, during wet weather, these galls swell, and…
Gardening in not a solo activity. I garden with my dogs, so I created a term called dog gardening. Issac, the white dog, likes to dig. I watch him toss a chunk of wood, he barks, howls; he furiously claws,…