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| Do you see the photo bomber? |
If you had wind damage to the garden and plants were blown
over, especially sweet corn, see the article below.
Here in Michigan this past week 4 tornadoes touched down and
did extensive damage. Across the country there have been storms, floods, fires,
and drought. It’s a good year to evaluate how you might change your garden or gardening
practices to reflect the changing weather patterns. Should you move the garden to higher ground,
add drainage tiles, or make raised beds?
Should you shift your landscape plants to drought tolerant species?
Should you install a fire break or roof sprinklers? Planning and implementing
some changes can help mitigate garden damage in the next garden season and beyond.
Monday was a beautiful typical Michigan summer day. It was
hot, but it’s that time of year. It was sunny and there was no smoke from the
wildfires. I went out early to do a little weeding and got to watch a mamma Eastern
phoebe feeding a baby in our cedar tree. I got some pictures of both birds, but
not together.
The bees were really busy, they were visiting hosta flowers
primarily. People forget that hosta flowers attract both bees and
hummingbirds. There has been a lot of
butterflies around lately too. I saw Tiger
swallowtails, a black swallowtail, red spotted purples, viceroys, a monarch,
and a bunch of small butterflies I think are meadow fritillaries.
Blooming here now are cannas, rudbeckia, daylilies,
coreopsis, roses, orienpet lilies, tiger lilies, hollyhock, hosta, beebalm, garden
phlox, anise hyssop, lavender, and a whole range of annuals. The rose of Sharon
are beginning to bloom. Three of the five new dahlias are beginning to bloom,
the other two have buds.
The violet stemmed taro leaves are getting huge, but my elephant ear is not very big this year. Neither is the canna ‘Tropicana’. I’ve had that canna for 3 years now and it’s never gotten more than a foot tall with a couple leaves. Time to try a new plant and discard that one, I guess. Some plants are just bummers.
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| Violet stemmed taro and canna |
In the vegetable garden I am struggling with fungal diseases
as are so many gardeners this year. MSU states that cucurbit downy mildew (see
below) has been found in several Michigan counties, including mine and I
believe my cucumbers and pumpkins may have it. I’ll decide in the next day or
so whether to pull them and discard them. My cukes are not elongating, they turn into
little balls with a shriveled tail. I picked a few and they are bitter when
eaten. This could be a heat/pollination
problem or from disease.
I am getting some nice tomatoes, but many are splitting from
excess water. And the plants have Septoria
leaf blight, so they won’t be at their best.
They are loaded with tomatoes though.
We are eating Goliath tomatoes now and they are yummy.
I found a tiny watermelon starting on one of my melon
plants. They don’t seem to be affected by any problems- yet. The peppers seem to be doing well. And my pot plant is growing like the weed it
is.
Today its cloudy and we may get some rain. Even though it
rained 6/10 of an inch Saturday, Monday evening I was watering all the pots. It’s
amazing how quick they dry out. And
through today we have had less than 3 inches of rain in August but just to the
south of us they have had 15 inches through the month. It’s just so strange.
Cucurbit Downy
mildew
Cucurbit Downy mildew is a
serious disease of cucumbers, squash, pumpkins and melons. It is different from
powdery mildew, which is a common problem but less destructive. There are 5 strains of this fungus. It is most common in wet weather.
Symptoms of downy mildew are light green to yellow angular spots
on the top of leaves. Spots eventually start
running together, turn brown and the leaves dry out and fall off. The bottom of
the leaves will have black, water-soaked looking areas, then a purple-brown
dusty or fuzzy appearance to the bottom of leaves when spores appear. Usually,
spots appear on older leaves first.
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| Downy mildew on cucumber Photo UMass, J. Higgins |
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| Downy mildew on back of leaf. UMass, J. Higgins |
Cucumber plants quickly seem to dry up and die. Squash and
melons are damaged but often continue growing. Downy mildew is carried to crops
by the wind and usually begins in hot, wet or humid weather. Once in your garden it will spread
rapidly.
Cucumber plants rapidly die from the disease. Melons have greatly reduced production. Squash and pumpkins survive but grow more
slowly and are less productive.
The best thing to do is to prevent downy mildew by applying protective fungicides. IF YOU ARE IN MICHIGAN YOU MAY WANT TO DO THIS NOW. The Extension office in your county should be able to tell you if downy mildew is a problem in commercial fields in your area. If commercial growers have it, it will soon be in home gardens. You can check this national map for infections also https://cdm.ipmpipe.org/
Look for home garden fungicides that have chlorothalonil or
mancozeb in the ingredients and apply as directed. If started and applied regularly before the
infection gets to your garden, you may save your crop. If caught early
fungicides may help crops that are lightly infected. Heavily infected crops
won’t be helped. There are no organic products that are effective for downy
mildew. Baking soda, milk, Epsom salts,
dish soap and so on are useless.
If you can’t bring yourself to use a conventional fungicide
on plants infected with downy mildew, then pull the plants once they are
infected and bury them away from the garden or put them in plastic bags for the
landfill. Don’t mess around with home
remedies, allowing the disease to continue spreading. Don’t compost infected plants at home. Don’t
plant in the same spot next year and make sure all plant residue is removed
from the garden in the fall. Next year
look for varieties that are resistant to downy mildew.
There is also a strain of downy mildew that also infects and
quickly kills impatiens plants.
Lodging (blow
over) of corn and other plants
When we get summer storms with wind and rain tall plants can
get blown over – or “lodged”. This often happens to corn when storms happen
after the tasseling stage. It can also happen to tall garden plants with heavy
blooms, like lilies, sunflowers and phlox.
After the storm has passed examine your garden carefully for blown over plants. When you see a big patch of sweet corn just starting to get ears lying on the ground you may be ready to cry, but don’t despair, you can often fix things. If plants are just blown over and stems aren’t snapped, you have a good chance for repairs to work.
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| Sweet corn blown over by storm |
Let it dry out a bit before you attempt to do repairs- it
won’t hurt to wait a day or two. Don’t wait too long though. Find some nice stakes-
maybe you can cut some from tree limbs that also fell in the storm. Farm stores
sell electric fence stakes in various sizes and garden stores sell bamboo
stakes. You may need twine or soft rope
for tying up individual plants or rolls of wire for rows of corn.
For individual plants like lilies, put the stake behind it –
far enough back you won’t stab the bulb, and then lift the plant slowly and
carefully and tie it to the stake. You may be able to put stakes around a clump
of plants and then run wire or rope around the stakes – but its hard to get
several plants lifted up at the same time and then run wire around them.
Be very careful lifting up blown over plants. If you snap
the stems, it’s all over. That’s why you put the stakes in first – so you aren’t
holding them up and trying to insert a stake. It can be helpful to have a helper
if you have a lot of plants to stake. If
they have exposed roots on one side gently scoop some soil over them after
staking and lightly press the roots down on that side.
Farmers whose field corn has lodged are advised just to leave
it. In many cases the corn will try to right itself- bending and growing upward
again. It’s harder to harvest corn this way though. You can try this with sweet
corn and you may still get a decent crop- or it may rot on the ground.
I have had sweet corn lodge before, and this is what I did. It’s a lot of work but it will help you get a
harvest. Start behind the last row of corn- where the wind has blown it away
from where you are standing. Put stakes every 8-10 feet – they can be 3-4 feet
tall. Then run wire or rope across your stakes- attach it so its taut and the
wire/rope won’t slide down the post when weight is put on it. The wire/rope should be at least 3 feet above
ground.
You may need something like fence post insulators that screw
on the post. I have seen people use duct
tape wrapped around the post in a thick layer and then the wire/rope goes above
that. A notch near the top of a wood
post or a nail sticking out can work. You want to keep the wire/rope from
sliding down.
I happened to have electric wire and posts with insulators
on hand but if you can’t find something to use and have to buy the supplies you
may want to weigh the cost and effort against just buying sweet corn at the
farm market later. I spent most of a day one year lifting the sweet corn after
lodging, but I thought it was worth it.
After the posts and wire/rope is up, go down the row lifting
the corn plants and leaning them against the wire. Then put up a second set of posts and
wire/rope and repeat and so on. If your rows are close together this won’t be
easy.
If you can’t get into your patch to do this, you may as well
just leave the corn and hope for the best. It should look better after two
weeks. If it doesn’t, if it yellows or starts looking black and moldy just pull
it and call time of death. Pollination is harder with lodged corn so if the
corn is blown over when it’s tasseling and it doesn’t right itself quickly, you
won’t get much of a crop.
You’ll find that after a couple weeks most corn won’t need
the wire to stay upright but taking it down will be a hassle, so leave it until
after harvest.
Color for
late summer gardens
In April, standing in the garden, August seems so far away.
In April, hungry for color, we stride through the garden center, grabbing up perennials
already in bloom, or looking as if they will bloom soon. We want a garden -now.
The garden centers know this and the perennials they put out to tempt you are
weeks ahead of when they normally bloom. Some are grown in greenhouses; some
are grown in the far south under hoops and trucked north. But they are nice,
big plants, some with blooms.
If we in the north were choosing perennials in April grown
locally outside, they would probably be sprouts in a pot. Some gardeners would
be experienced enough to know these are a good choice. But would we choose them, if sitting next to
them was the same plant only larger with buds and blooms? My experience in
retail says people naturally go for the bigger, blooming plants. Your mind
tells you one thing, but your eyes direct your hands to pick up the bigger
plant with flowers.
Is there anything wrong with this? Other than having to protect
those more developed plants from late frosts things will probably be fine. Next
year they will come up and bloom in your garden when the normal time for them
to do so comes. But there is one disadvantage to this cheating the season
scenario. Many gardens end up lacking late summer color, both in the current
year and in years to come.
Even with tricks to advance bloom, the late summer bloomers
may not be quite as big and pretty in April as the early summer bloomers. The
gardener sees colorful Siberian iris, daylilies, poppies, bleeding heart, Asiatic
lilies, creeping phlox, columbines and delphiniums and chooses them. Some
gardeners are unaware that most perennials bloom for a short period and then
quit.
If you want color in the late summer garden, you need to
plan for it. In the spring those late bloomers may not seem like they are
contributing much, but you’ll be happy to see them later. Luckily many of the
common garden perennials that begin bloom after the summer equinox do have long
bloom periods, taking the color into fall.
Garden mums, echinacea (coneflowers), monarda (beebalm) rudbeckia
(black eyed Susans- and others), coreopsis, helenium, hardy hibiscus, rose of
Sharon, buddleia, sedums, hollyhocks, asters, tall garden phlox and goldenrod
are all plants that either have a long summer blooming period or bloom late in
the season.
For shadier gardens late summer color can be provided by
fall blooming anemones, toad lilies, cimicifuga (snakeroot)
and even hostas. Many hosta have beautiful blooms. Hosta varieties have a varied
bloom time, with some blooming in June or July and some in August. If you need late
summer color look for late blooming varieties.
One thing the gardener can do is incorporate bulbs and
tubers into the garden like cannas, dahlias, crocosmia, peacock orchids, glads,
and late blooming lilies. Many of these have long bloom times and will take the
color to the first hard frost.
Some bulbs need to be dug up and stored, depending on your
garden zone if you want them for the next year. Many gardeners treat them like
annuals, however. And of course, bedding annuals can really be helpful for fall
color, with things like geraniums and petunias even surviving light frosts. (Actually
those examples are tender perennials treated like annuals.)
Having a beautiful, blooming garden in late summer keeps you
interested in keeping it weeded and watered, which is a win for both you and
the plants. Keep that color coming.
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass... Life is about learning to dance in the rain."
- Vivian Greene.
Kim Willis
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copyrighted and may not be used without permission.
And So On….
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