Kim's weekly garden newsletter July 9, 2013

July 9, 2013 - Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter

http://www.examiner.com/gardening-in-detroit/kimberley-willis

http://www.examiner.com/country-living-in-detroit/kimberley-willis

These weekly garden notes are written by Kim Willis, unless another author is noted, and the opinions expressed in these notes are her opinions and do not represent any other individual, group or organizations opinions.

Hi Gardeners

Catalpa flowers

The only thing good about this weather is that I don’t have to water the garden.  I was watering last week; we didn’t get any good rain until yesterday.  Yesterday we got about an inch.  It feels like we got a lot more rain over the past week because it’s been so humid.  Now I just need to go around and check containers to see that they don’t have too much water in them.  Even though some containers technically have drainage, heavy rain can overwhelm the system, and container drainage holes often clog.  Plants die quickly in waterlogged soil.  Check your containers and either tilt them carefully to drain water off or punch some additional holes near the bottom.

The catalpa trees in my yard are snowing, throwing their blossoms down like popcorn on a theater floor.  They do look beautiful when they are blooming but they are messy trees.  People have been stopping to ask me what they are, and I offer them seedlings pulled up from my flower beds, I can almost always find one.  I warn them they are messy trees, not only the flowers fall and turn into a brown slimy mess on the lawn but little stems break off all the time in the wind.  The seed pods that form after the flowers split open turn into twisted sticks that rain down on the yard all fall and well into the next spring.

The pods look like bean pods, but the seeds inside are more like milkweed seeds, flat with a tuft of fluff that disperses them in the wind.  Viola! catalpas everywhere.  The trees are fast growing and sprout back from the roots if cut.    There is some southern charm to the big heart shaped leaves and the flowers are frothy, lacy beauties that smell good too.  Plant them away from the front lawn and you’ll probably like them.

Double flower on tomato.

Other things that are blooming now in my garden are the daylilies, gaillardia, rudbeckias, hollyhocks, lavender and beebalm.  I have large buds on the dinnerplate dahlias and the oriental lilies, early for both of them.   I have an old refrigerator painted green and filled with soil that I plant salad greens in by the back door.  Last year there was a tomato plant added and this year a volunteer plant has popped up and it grew very quickly.  It is flowering and the flowers are double, something I have never seen before on a tomato.  I am wondering if it will produce fruit and what kind.

Tomato spraying

Speaking of tomatoes, late blight has popped up on potatoes in Wisconsin and on tomatoes in a few southern states.  MSU has a yellow alert out for late blight, which means conditions are very good for late blight to pop up and that commercial potato and tomato farmers should begin spraying fungicides once a week.  As a gardener you may want to start using a fungicide on your tomatoes and potatoes.  A product containing daconil and labeled for home vegetable gardens is probably your best bet.  Follow the label directions precisely.  Organic fungicides and remedies are on the market and in articles, but for late blight no organic product has ever shown good protection.  They may help with some other tomato fungal diseases.

Other tomato fungal problems are going to start popping up now.  Many gardens already have early blight and septoria leaf spot.  Remove diseased leaves immediately and scout your plants daily.  Your best plan for a good tomato crop is preventative spraying with a good fungicide.  Since tomatoes produce new leaves continuously you can help the plant even if it is already infected.  Remove the infected leaves and the spray will help protect newly sprouted leaves.  However this will not work if the plant gets late blight- once it gets it its gone.

Side dress corn

If you haven’t done so already it’s time to sidedress ( add fertilizer) to your sweet corn.  Use a slow release granular garden fertilizer between the rows just before a rain or good watering. Use one with a high first number, ( the nitrogen)  such as 10-10-10 or higher.  Blood meal is used by some organic farmers although you can find good organic fertilizers on the market now.   Try to keep the fertilizer off the corn stems, about 2-3 inches from the stalks.  Spread the fertilizer at the rate recommended on the bag.

Corn is a heavy user of nitrogen and will start to yellow and slow down in growth if nitrogen is lacking. It uses the most nitrogen just before and during the tasseling( pollination) stages.   Heavy rains tend to deplete nitrogen so this year side dressing is important.  You want your corn to have deep green sturdy looking leaves and stems. 

At the Market

Farm markets should be offering green beans, early summer squash, early raspberries, and many types of herbs along with the items mentioned last week, salad greens, radishes, beets, green onions, peas, and cherries .  Strawberries are probably done.  You may find cherry and some other small tomatoes and young cukes.   New potatoes will start coming on the market soon.  Blueberries are probably 2 weeks away along with sweet corn and the main tomato harvest.

Why there are fewer Japanese beetles this year

Many people are remarking on the near absence of Japanese beetles this year but a report from Ohio State University says it mainly has to do with the drought last year.  When Japanese beetle eggs hatch into grubs in July and August they need moist soil to do well.  Drought last year means fewer nasty beetles this year.  But what will this year’s wet weather do for next year’s crop of beetles?

It’s good that there are fewer grubs in the lawn, you won’t need to apply grub control and that’s good news for bees.  Most grub control products now contain imidacloprid or another one of the pesticides called neonicotinoids.  Research continues to show that these products disrupt bee behavior, and kill bee larvae even in very miniscule amounts.  Most neonicotinoids are now banned in Europe for this and other reasons. 

I read something an MSU Turf specialist said – he wasn’t worried about bees being affected by neonicotinoids because bees only feed on flowering plants with nectar, which lawn grass doesn’t have.  How many lawns out there have clover, dandelions and many other types of flowering plants that bees like growing in them?  What about flower beds in lawns?, since neonicotinoids don’t harm plants, people aren’t always careful about where the pesticide lands.    If you must have a lawn please accept the fact that it may have bugs and grubs and don’t treat it with pesticides.  More lawn chemicals are used in the US than chemicals used on farm crops and they are a major contributor to water pollution and to harming beneficial insects and birds.

Cherries and birds

I posed this question on the Lapeer MG Facebook page and got some responses that confirm what I thought- there are fewer birds this year.  I have been picking lots of cherries, although they are small, and that is very unusual, the birds generally get them first.  And the mulberries are falling off the tree instead of being eaten.  Other people are saying the same thing.  And it seems it isn’t just in Michigan, the blueberry harvest in Florida was supposedly better than usual because there was little bird damage.

Now I like getting cherries, but I am a little concerned about the bird situation.  My feeders aren’t needing to be filled nearly as often as this time last year.  Even the grape jelly and hummingbird feeders are not emptying as fast.  I searched a bit on line and found birders talking about fewer birds, lots of people reporting dead birds too.  Some speculation is that the drought killed a lot of young birds last year and the cold, late spring hindered and killed a lot of birds flying north this spring.  Some think the birds are actually going farther north this year.  (Other scenarios include government experiments, aliens and all kinds of diseases.)

If you have noticed fewer birds this year or lots of dead birds shoot me a line.  I am going to do some more research, I do see that the Christmas bird count reported large decreases in many common birds.  For example there was a 23% decrease in American Goldfinches and I know I have seen much fewer of them and hardly need to fill my thistle feeder more than every other week.  Cedar waxwings were down 66%, Blue Jays 25%, even house sparrows were down 12%. 

There were fewer than 10 Bobwhites counted this year and no tree swallows or Eastern meadowlarks in Michigan.  I saw tree swallows early in the season though, and I thought they were going to nest in a bluebird box, but I haven’t seen them in some time, and my barn swallows were also here briefly and then haven’t been back.  I used to see several pairs of orioles at my feeder , now I think there is only one pair left in the area, it’s hard to tell them apart but the jelly isn’t being eaten very well.  Wrens however are in abundance here.

Moths and bats

Switching to other things that fly, some interesting research on moths has come out this month, from several places.  At night when you think your garden is sleeping a deadly war rages between bats and their favorite food, moths,( no a bat likes moths better than mosquitoes, more meat).  Bats use sonar radio waves-echolocation- to locate their prey and it seems that many species of moths have developed sonar jamming techniques; they emit high frequency sound waves to disrupt bat sonar. 

Several species of large, night flying moths have this ability.  And not only did they develop this as they evolved alongside bats, they also found other uses for their sounds.  These moths are some of the few insects that can hear, they have ears that detect high frequency noise, and they can use that noise and hearing to communicate with other moths.  Since a moths life really revolves around reproduction, most of the whispered conversation between moths has to do with seduction.  They whisper because bats can hear their sounds.  They only converse between each other when they are close to each other and then very softly.

One type of moth however found a new use for the hearing- talking adaptation.  The Asian Corn Borer moth mimics a bats hunting calls, which causes all the female moths in the vicinity to freeze to avoid bat detection.   That makes it easy for the male moth to mate them.

Research on moths was done at University of Tokyo, University of Strathclyde, and Florida Museum's McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity and reported in several publications.

The Michigan Lily

Michigan Lily

Some 10 years ago a Master Gardener gave me 3 bulbs of a native wildflower, Lilium canadense ssp. Michiganense.  They are commonly called Michigan lily and are found throughout the eastern states.  These plants are a bit tricky to grow in the garden, I have two plants left and after all these years no additional plants have popped up.  Some years they do well, sometimes they don’t even bloom.   They must be kept weeded and the stems are fragile and easily damaged when you are pulling weeds around them.   I feel lucky that I have kept two plants alive for such a long time.

Michigan lily is already listed as endangered in some states and may soon be listed here. The plants are delicate and slow to reproduce and Michigan’s overly abundant deer herd is rapidly removing them from many places. They are found in moist meadows, at the edges of woodlands and sometimes in roadside ditches. They prefer moist, rich soil and sunny to partly sunny conditions.  You rarely find large clumps of the Michigan lilies, they seem to exist in small groups of 2-3 plants or singly and the slightest environmental change can make them disappear.  They were never really common, and finding one in the wild now is a real challenge.

The Michigan lily has long narrow leaves that are whorled around a delicate stem and are concentrated near the base of the plant. Most Michigan lilies produce a single flower at the top of the plant on a long stretch of leafless stem. Plants sometimes branch at the tip to produce two or three flowers.

Michigan Lily

The Michigan lily flowers are orange on the outside, with a yellow and orange inside flecked with purple to brown spots. The flower petals are curved backward until they almost touch the outside base and they dangle facing downward with orange stamens clearly visible. The flowers are about 1½ to 3 inches in size and plants range from 24-40 inches tall.  The flowers are pollinated by hummingbirds and long tongued moths such as sphinx and hummingbird moths and larger butterflies such as the Spicebush Swallowtail and the Monarch.

Michigan lilies reproduce very slowly from seed, taking several years to bloom. The seedpods are small dark 3 sided capsules filled with flat seeds that have papery wings.  The seeds are wind dispersed.  ( I have yet to see a seed capsule in the garden.) The plants have a small scaled yellow bulb and they are said to produce rhizomes underground that eventually can  produce new bulblets and then new plants, although I have seen no evidence of that.

The Canada lily is much more yellow in color and the flower petals do not curve backward except for a bit at the tip. The Canada lily is a little larger and more robust plant but they too are endangered. Michigan lilies are also like the cultivated Turks cap lilies, but those have larger flowers and plants, the center of the flower generally has a green throat and the bulbs are white instead of the pale yellow of the Michigan lily.  The anthers of the Michigan Lily are a ½ inch or less in size and Turks cap lilies have anthers larger than ½ inch.   Michigan lilies are also mistaken for tiger lilies; those have a different leaf, bulbils in the leaf axils and are larger with petals that don’t curve backward as far as the Michiganese.

Keep an eye on the sky today- severe weather is possible, especially this evening.

Kim

Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent