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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

September 17, 2013 Kim's Weekly Garden Newsletter



September 17, 2013 - Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter


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

We had a light frost in some areas on Saturday night and again last night.  I hate having to cover everything but I know some things will continue to bloom, like the dahlias, if they are covered during light frosts.  The next few days don’t seem to be a problem for frost, although I will check on the forecast again this evening to see if the prediction has changed.  I gave up Monday and moved most of the true houseplants inside.  I had to pick all the acorns out of the pots so I don’t start trees. I’ll wait for a while on things like my rosemary and the geraniums because they can withstand cooler weather better than some of the tropicals.
The garden at Suncrest, a free public garden in Lapeer, Mi.

I hate having to water in this chilly weather it just doesn’t seem right and my poor arthritic hands tell me so.  I am holding off on most of the watering until tomorrow until I see how the weather shapes up for Wednesday night and Thursday, when we are supposed to get some good rain, especially Thursday night into Friday.   I hope so as we really need it.

I still have annuals and the shrub roses blooming as well as hibiscus and mums.  I know the autumn equinox is here because the Maximilian sunflower is getting ready to bloom. ( See below.)  It’s September 22.  Full moon, Harvest moon is tomorrow.  It’s hard to believe September is more than half over.

My tomatoes have really gone downhill- they succumbed to fungal diseases.  That’s ok because I am getting tired of them- yes- I no longer want them at every meal. We have plenty on the windowsill for a few days and lots in the freezer.  Our pumpkins are turning orange and I hope they will make it to Halloween.  I promised the granddaughters they could take them soon.  We have some huge pumpkins this year.

I am starting to clean up the veggie garden; cabbage is about the only crop left.  Our apples are almost ripe and then I will be very busy again.  There’s nothing better than apple pie and homemade apple butter.

I visited the Garden on Suncrest yesterday and it is looking pretty good despite looking a little dry.  There are some nice additions again this year; I liked the white boxes with the white metal art behind them.  If you haven’t seen the garden this year better hurry and take a look.

If you are ever interested in seeing pictures of some of the things I discuss in the newsletter take a look at my blog site, where I post part of this newsletter with pictures each week.  I don’t like to post pictures in the email addition because it makes the files too large for some people.  The blog is at http://gardeninggrannysgardenpages.blogspot.com/

The Maximilian sunflower

A long time ago I planted a wildflower mixture in a big bare area and even today I have legacies of that mixture left.  I’m actually fighting to remove some of them before they overwhelm what I now call my butterfly garden.  The Maximilian sunflower was one of those plants.  I do like the cheerful yellow flowers when little else is blooming and the birds like the seeds so I always leave some plants.  While I try to keep the Maximilian population down in my garden, I haven’t seen it spread to any other parts of my yard.  I have, however, seen some plants on the south side of Clifford in a swamp area.   

The Maximilian sunflower, (Helianthus maximilianii), is probably not native to Michigan, it is a wildflower of the north-central prairies that has been introduced into cultivation and then escaped and naturalized in our state. Its cheerful small sunflower blooms may be seen along roadside ditches and in sunny meadows in September and October.

Maximilian Sunflower
Maximilian sunflowers are perennial plants, slowly forming clusters of plants in a good environment. They are a favorite of birds, producing many tiny, tasty seeds, and their late season color makes them attractive in an informal garden setting. Maximilian sunflowers will cross with our common annual sunflower and experiments are being done to develop a perennial crop sunflower with larger seeds.

Maximilian sunflowers grow extremely tall when they have moisture and full sun, easily reaching 6-7 feet. They have a tendency to fall over when blooms begin unless propped by tall grasses or weeds around them. Unlike common sunflowers, the leaves of Maximilian sunflowers are long and grass-like, folding slightly in the middle and arching downward. They are dark green to gray green. The sturdy stems of the plant have small white hairs along them.

The blooms of Maximilian sunflower are clustered at the ends of the plant and resemble small sunflowers. Both the outer petals and center are bright yellow. It blooms for a long period, beginning in mid- September and continuing to a hard freeze. The flowers produce small seeds that look like the typical sunflower seed that are relished by birds. Birds are responsible for spreading the seeds to new locations. Animals will eagerly graze the plants also.

It is said that Native Americans of the plains ate both the seeds and roots of Maximilian sunflowers. If introduced to gardens for the birds or late season color the plants can be cut back to half their length in early July and the plants will be shorter and less likely to sprawl when blooming.

Citizen science you can participate in

Brown Marmorated Stink bug.  If you like contributing to the general knowledge of our planet, here are some projects you might be interested in.   The Brown Marmorated Stink bug is a pest that many of you may have experienced trying to hide in your home for the winter.  Besides that problem the BMS bug also feeds on small fruit, grapes, vegetables and ornamental plants, producing a lot of damage.  A group effort by researchers from USDA, the University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, Virginia Tech, the Northeastern IPM Center, Oregon State University, North Carolina State University, Cornell University, the University of Delaware and Washington State University wants to find out how many BMS bugs are in the country and how they behave.

The group of researchers would like citizens to report how many BMS bugs they see gathered outside their homes and where they were found and when.   The researchers want to find out how landscape features affect BMS bug populations.   While the count is focusing on the middle Atlantic States, researchers are interested in hearing from all areas.  Volunteers willing to count their stink bugs can contact USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS) entomologists Tracy Leskey (tracy.leskey@ars.usda.gov), Doo-Hyung Lee or Torri Hancock at (304) 725-3451, at the ARS Appalachian Fruit Research Laboratory in Kearneysville, West Virginia.

Red Emperor tulips. The timing of spring as it unfolds across North America is another citizen science project you can get involved in.  Simply plant red Emperor tulips this fall and report online when they bloom in the spring.  The tulips are available in many places, and they are a tulip that tends to return each year when in the right spot.  They are bright, shiny red with a yellow center and black stamens.  They are a shorter tulip and bloom very early.  You can blend them with early white or yellow tulips or blue grape hyacinth.

You report when your red Emperor tulips bloom by registering on the Journey North website. (It’s free.)  You can then see information on where other tulips are planted and when they begin blooming.  You can track the progress of spring across the country. This is an activity that a lot of classrooms participate in but anyone can participate, young or old, groups or single.  Here’s the web address http://www.learner.org/jnorth/

How soil microbes may affect your health

Science is discovering new clues to how the environment affects our health every day.  We have always known that having good soil makes gardening much easier but now there is some research that suggests that what type of soil is in the area where we spent our younger years may affect our future health.

There is an area of the country called the stroke belt, where people are more likely to have strokes than in other areas.  The Blue Ridge-Piedmont area which includes parts of South Carolina and several other states has the highest ratio of strokes to population in the US.  Even after race, income and other things are factored in scientists were still puzzled by the high rate of strokes and suspected an environmental cause. 

Medical University of South Carolina professor Daniel Lackland and Agricultural Research Service (ARS) research leader Patrick Hunt, microbiologist Thomas Ducey, and soil scientist Jarrod Miller along with retired ARS soil scientist Warren Busscher formed a team to examine South Carolina medical records and also to analyze soil profiles.  They found that the areas where the most strokes occurred correlated with areas that had poorly drained, shallow, very acidic soils. Areas where the soil was well drained, deep and closer to neutral had a lower incidence of strokes, at least in South Carolina. 

Soils of different types contain different microbes.  Recent research has shown that human bodies contain millions of microbes of various types and that each human probably has a slightly different ratio and types of microbes.   We are just learning what microbes affect our health and in what way.  The research on the human “microbiome” is expanding rapidly.  The same types of microbes found in our bodies are also found in soil.

Researchers have also discovered that the type of microbes you have in your body may depend on where you spent the early years of your life.  People who were born in the stroke belt still had a higher risk of stroke than people born in other areas even when they had been away from the area for a long time.   

This research is new, and scientists are eager to expand into other areas of health correlating soil characteristics, including soil microbes to disease and immune problems.  We already have research that confirms that our rise in childhood allergies correlates with greater cleanliness and children having less exposure to the outdoors and good old dirt.  Kids may not be getting the microbes they need to prime the immune system.  You might want to feed your kids some dirt.

You can read more about the stroke research in the August, 2013 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

Making flies die

In the fall just before a good hard freeze the pesky fly populations reach their peak.  I think they are a little less than last year, but they are still bothersome.  Flies carry a lot of disease organisms on their tiny feet and everyone agrees maggots, fly babies, are just plain gross.  You can spray with insecticides but that has the potential to make you as ill as the flies, if not more so.  And sticky traps and those that collect flies in smelly solutions are also disgusting.  We spend a lot of time hitting flies with fly swatters this time of year, but it scares our dogs for some reason.

Scientists have announced however, that a new type of safe fly control may be on the way.  They have discovered a fly virus, salivary gland hypertrophy virus (SGHV ),that works to destroy the flies reproductive capability.  When the virus infects the fly it uses up all the protein the fly ingests, making the female fly unable to produce viable eggs and males refuse to mate. The flies develop huge salivary glands instead.  Infected flies also don’t eat as much and have a shorter life span.  The virus affects house flies, stable flies and something called the black dump fly.

The biggest problem scientists at the Agricultural Research Service’s Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE) in Gainesville, Florida, are having is how to infect the flies with the virus.  In nature the infection rate is generally low.  Baits and sprays made with the virus only infest 20-30% of the flies that contact them.  However a sludgy mixture of flies that died from the virus in water, called a homogenate, will infect more than 50% of the flies that come in contact with it.

Researchers hope to be able to develop a fly control product from this SGHV homogenate soon.  It will be environmentally friendly and safe for use in homes and animal areas.  And studies using the virus may determine how insect reproduction can be targeted by manipulating how their bodies use protein.  Let’s hope they succeed soon.

Fall Webworm

The "tent" that fall webworms make is at the end of branches.
If you are noticing those huge webs of wiggling worms on the tips of branches on trees in your area, don’t be alarmed.  The fall webworm is a native seasonal pest that doesn’t significantly harm trees even though they look pretty ugly.  In Michigan we begin seeing the “tents” of fall webworm in late August.  Even after a hard freeze kills the worms inside, or they have become pupae, the nests may hang in the trees until winter winds dislodge them.

Fall webworms are often confused with their spring cousins, the Eastern Tent Caterpillar.  Fall webworms enclose leaves at the end of a branch with their white, web like tent.  They feed inside the tent and enlarge it when all the leaves inside are eaten.  Eastern tent caterpillars make their tents in the crotches of branches and they leave the tent to feed on leaves, returning to the tent for protection from weather.  Eastern tent caterpillars appear in late spring and early summer, fall webworms late in the summer.

The nests of fall webworms are usually on the outside branches of a tree, where the branch extends over an open sunny area such as a road or lawn.   This makes them very visible to concerned gardeners.   Each nest contains a colony of small caterpillars, busily feeding on tree leaves.  The caterpillars are either red headed or black headed.  Black headed webworms are greenish, with two rows of black bumps on the sides.  Red headed webworms are tan with orange or red bumps.  Both are covered in long white hairs.

The adult fall webworm is a small white moth, occasionally marked with a few black spots.  She lays her eggs on the underside of leaves, where they hatch and begin feeding.  The young feed for about 6 weeks then drop to the ground to pupate and over-winter.  Occasionally in Michigan’s southern counties there is enough warm weather in fall for the first generation to turn into moths and create a second generation.  Levels of the pest are higher in some years too, with heavier populations every 5-7 years.

Fall webworms prefer to feed on trees such as wild cherry, walnut, hickories and fruit trees but can feed on almost any tree.  They seldom feed on willows and cottonwoods.  When a tent or web is disturbed all the little caterpillars move in a peculiar synchronized jiggling movement.  This may be their attempt to make a predator think something much larger is lurking within.

Controlling fall webworm

Since trees are near the end of their active cycle the loss of leaves from Fall Webworms doesn’t harm them much.   If the nests offend you, you can use your garden hose to spray them out of the tree or use a stick to knock them down, and then smash the worms.  Worms won’t crawl back up the tree when knocked to the ground.   You can trim the tents out of the tree if doing so doesn’t harm the looks of the tree.  Valuable ornamental trees can be treated with systemic pesticides early in summer.  These go through the tree and kill the worms as they start to feed on leaves later in the year.

Pesticide sprays are not recommended as the collateral damage to the environment isn’t worth it, as trees are barely affected by the feeding of the Fall Webworm.   Most pesticides do not effectively penetrate the webs; they would have to be torn open.   Spraying foliage around the nests may kill the caterpillars when they enclose more leaves into the web.  And burning the tents with a blowtorch is far more dangerous to the tree and to you than the worms.

Fall webworms have several natural enemies in Michigan including yellow jackets and paper wasps.  If you tolerate these insects on your property then you may have fewer fall webworms.  Birds also like to eat the worms, especially if you tear the web for them.

It’s chili time, have a bowl.

Kim
Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent


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