August 27, 2021 - Fostering plants- You Got To Be Kidding

Crassula spp.

Succulents are a big fad in Japan as they are in many other countries right now, including the US.  Most people don’t realize that the term “succulent” applies to a whole range of plant species that have similar characteristics, but not necessarily similar care. I wish growers would stop labeling plants “succulents” and label them with their actual scientific names.

Plants classified as succulents have some beautiful and unusual members. But all succulents are not easy to grow, like dim light or can survive long periods without water. Each species has different needs, and some are quite difficult to grow in the home.

Many people now seem to be keeping plants simply as décor, and photographic subjects that can be posted on social media. In Japan it is extremely popular to post pictures of your succulents on Tic Toc and Facebook. The larger and more exotic your collection of succulents is the better.

But some of these social media personalities have found keeping a plant they spent a lot of money on so they could take pictures of it, is not as easy as they thought.  So, a new industry has blossomed in Japan, plant fostering.

That’s right, in Japan for a fee, greenhouses and experienced plant people will keep your prized succulents at their place, and send you pictures or let you come take pictures of the plants for your social media feed.  You get the recognition – but they get paid well for caring for your plant.

The top 10% have always had paid gardeners but take credit for their beautiful gardens. Martha Stewart is a prime example here, she’s shown working in her gardens, and no doubt she does do a little work. But the vast majority of the work on the gardens of Martha’s three homes is done by professionals. Most of the cooking and crafting is also done by others but that’s another story.

But rather ordinary people paying others to maintain houseplants for them so they can post pictures and talk about their collections is something new, and something I hope doesn’t spread to the US.  Houseplants are meant to be in YOUR house.  There’s no benefit to having houseplants if they are being kept somewhere else and being cared for by someone else.

This fostering of plants is also contributing to what has become a worldwide problem, the poaching of rare and endangered succulents from various countries. If an experienced grower is caring for a difficult succulent, it makes people more likely to spend big bucks on that rare succulent for their collection.  And if someone shows up at their door looking to arrest them for poaching, the plant isn’t there and they can say they the pictures they posted were faked.

I can see where unscrupulous plant fosters could make some big bucks off this insane trend also. Keep one of those big, rare succulents around and let people believe it’s theirs, while you sell it over and over again.

So far, I haven’t seen this fostering trend take hold in the US. It’s bad enough people are paying ridiculous prices for common plants because of a trend. But at least they seem to be trying to actually care for them at their home.  And that’s the way it should be.

If you are into collecting succulents because everyone else seems to be, at least make sure you get plants that have a scientific name attached, so you can find proper information on caring for them. All succulents do not like to grow in dim light and be watered by the teaspoon (or worse idea -ice cube.) They can’t be sat on a shelf and forgot about until you want a picture. And plants do not like to be shuffled into new pots and staged in new locations frequently for pictures either.

Houseplants will only benefit you if they are in your house and you are caring for them. Succulents are not the only plant type that are easy to grow, there are many types of easy to maintain houseplants. If you want houseplants, take the time to learn about them and assess your home so you can pick the right one for the spot and your capabilities.

August 20, 2021 'Blue my Mind'

 I decided on the spur of the moment this spring to make my containers on the porch have a red, white and blue theme. As some of you know, it’s hard to get true blue in flowers, red and white are easy. I put some of the bluer hued petunias in three planters, with red and white begonias and gerbera daisies but for a focal planter on the porch I wanted something different.  I put some blue salvia in the center, added red gerberas, and white alyssum, and then added this little blue charmer, an Evolvulus, cultivar named, ‘Blue my Mind’.

I tried growing Evolvulus years ago and wasn’t thrilled with it. But modern cultivars have made “dwarf morning glories” a much nicer plant. If you like pretty blue flowers, then this little charmer may be for you.  I am quite pleased with it as a container plant, where it’s hard to get true blue flowers.  It also makes a great ground cover in warmer areas.  I can see it mixed with red and white vinca or maybe pink wax begonias.

Evolvulus glomeratus is indeed related to the morning glories, but the leaves and flowers are not similar, except for one factor, the flowers do close up late in the day or if it’s raining, like morning glories. The true-blue flowers are about an inch across, have 5 petals and a white center. The plant does not vine but has a trailing habit.  The leaves are, slightly hairy, small and oval. In full sunshine the leaves have a silvery look, in less light the silver cast is lost.

Evolvulus is a tender perennial, it’s grown as an annual in northern states, but it might be a candidate for wintering indoors.  I intend to try it and see. Plants bloom from June all through summer. It prefers full sun but will still bloom in partial or light shade. It’s drought tolerant but too much dryness will make it stop blooming.

It’s easy to care for, mix in a little fertilizer at planting and give it a fertilizer boost in August. It doesn’t need deadheading but if it gets straggly in late summer it can be cut back and it will quickly regrow. No known insect pests but bees are quite fond of the flowers. It rarely has any disease problems.

Keep this little charmer in mind for your containers next year. It makes an excellent “spiller” or ‘filler” and that pretty blue brings something different to the show.

August 18, 2021 - Tomato hornworms are not hummingbird moths

Tomato hornworm

 OK- here's a rant. I am seeing this on various social media sites constantly and it's making me frustrated. It seems people are now into "rescuing" tomato hornworms because they are under the mistaken assumption that they turn into "hummingbird moths". This FALSE information is everywhere and people keep blindly sharing it.

Tomato and tobacco hornworms are closely related and both eat tomato plants. They are those big fat green worms with a "horn" on the butt. Their scientific names are Manduca sexta ( tobacco, most common) and Manduca quinquemaculata ( tomato). When they finish devouring your tomatoes they drop to the ground and make a chrysalis in the soil. They mature into a big gray moth called a hawkmoth, NOT A HUMMINGBIRD MOTH.

There are several species of hummingbird moths, those little day flying moths that can hover and look somewhat like a hummingbird. The most common one is the White Lined Sphinx moth -Hyles lineata. Their caterpillars do not eat tomato plants, but feed on a variety of plants like apples, grapes, peonies and four o clocks. Some species have a little horn but the caterpillars are smaller and do not look like hornworms. They are what turns into the moth that looks like a hummingbird and is often called the hummingbird moth.

Let me repeat this - TOMATO HORNWORMS DO NOT TURN INTO HUMMINGBIRD MOTHS!

So do not rescue tomato/tobacco hornworms. Squish them. Each one of them will make a whole lot more hornworms. They are not what we consider a beneficial insect.

This is what the tomato hornworm turns into. This is a Manducta or hornworm adult moth.

Photo credit Mark Dreiling Bugwood.org

August 10, 2021 Jewels of Summer

 

I’ve been hearing the shrieking of a baby bald eagle outside for some days now.  They are very loud, noisy babies. I haven’t seen it, but I recognize the sound from other years when I have seen them. If you want to know what they sound like go to this site  https://www.birdnote.org/listen/shows/baby-bald-eagles   While it’s nice knowing a new eagle is joining the population his shriek does get annoying after a while.

I have seen no signs of diseased birds yet. But I have noted that the orioles seem to have vanished already. There are hummers around, but fewer than last year. Lots of chickadees and Carolina wrens this year at my house.

We had rain early this morning, but the sun is out now, and the humidity is awful. The heat and humidity make any gardening chores difficult now, but some plants are happy in it. The taro and umbrella palm I have are going nuts. My dahlias are now huge and flowering well. The garden phlox have huge heads of flowers this year.

There are lots of things blooming right now in my garden. The lilies are just about gone and only a few daylilies are still in bloom.  But rudbeckia, shasta daisies, echinacea, lavender, buddleia, rose of Sharon, coreopsis, some early mums and lots of annuals are blooming. My hardy hibiscus and the ligularia will bloom soon.  

I like hosta flowers and I have varieties that bloom from June to September.  The hosta Aphrodite is starting to bloom now, it has huge white trumpet flowers that smell wonderful. And there’s an old fashioned, narrow leaved hosta that was here when we bought the place that’s coming in bloom. It has tiny purple flowers on long stalks. 

When you let hosta bloom and make seeds instead of deadheading the flower scapes you’ll get baby hostas coming up in many places and some of them are delightful looking crosses of your adult hosta. I find little plants and transplant them around the place every year. So much easier and nicer to the big plants than dividing them so you have more plants.  And who knows that wild pairing may produce the next star of the hosta world.

Food gardeners- time to think about next year

It seems like it’s been a pretty bad year for food gardening in many places.  If your garden wasn’t flooded, it’s consumed by fungal diseases. Tomatoes aren’t ripening for some folk and cucumbers are small and bitter. I think the type of weather we are having, too hot, erratic temperature shifts, too wet, violent storms, is only going to intensify over the next few years.

Gardeners shouldn’t give up. Evaluate what you could do different next year. Maybe you could buy disease resistant varieties next year instead of heirlooms. Maybe you need raised beds for drainage. Or a drip irrigation system because your area is getting drier. Or maybe you should move, and I’m not saying that lightly.

Some of you may need to reevaluate your desire to grow without pesticides against your desire to produce food. With the stresses plants now have from erratic weather organic growing can leave you without much of a crop.  Pesticides can be used safely without harming the environment. You just have to use them wisely.

 A Gem of a Weed- Jewelweed

If you are looking for something a bit unusual for the garden that attracts hummingbirds and bees, you may want to try jewelweed. It’s blooming now in my garden and the plants are filled with buzzing bees. Hummingbirds go from each tiny flower to the next collecting nectar. And jewelweed is a native plant that will grow in a wide range of conditions. It may spread aggressively in some conditions so do consider that.

Jewelweed flower, seedpods below it

Jewelweed, (Impatiens capensis), is a native wildflower of Eastern North America.  Another common name for the plant is Touch- Me- Not, which comes from the seed pods which explode when touched. Jewelweed also has uses in herbal medicine and could be a candidate for the medicinal garden. 

Jewelweed is a tall, rangy plant so it looks best in the back of gardens and in informal settings.  It’s a good plant to use in rain gardens, native wildflower gardens and partially shaded areas.  It will grow in full sun if the soil is kept moist such as near ponds or in wet areas. It will also grow in deeper shade, but it will flower less.  It prefers rich, water retentive soil and doesn’t do well in sandy soil.

What Jewelweed looks like 

As a member of the impatiens family the jewelweed leaf is very similar to the leaf of the impatiens we plant in our yards. They are large, broadly oval, thin, and have toothed edges.  Jewelweed grows much taller than garden impatiens, with stems up to 6 feet in height if conditions are good.  The stems are very succulent, can become as large as your finger, and have prominent swollen joints.

The flowers of Jewelweed begin as small clusters of whitish buds coming from a stem and leaf junction.  They are on top of the leaves as they begin but by the time the buds open the leaves will have grown and the pretty yellow and orange flowers will dangle beneath them on slender stalks.   It begins blooming in mid-summer and will continue until frost.

Jewelweed flowers are yellow and funnel shaped ending in a narrow, curled tube called a spur. There is a flare of petals at the lower side of the opening that are usually orange.  The yellow throat of the flower is speckled with orange and brown. The flowers vary from 1/2 inch to an inch long.  There is another species of jewelweed that has flowers that are entirely pale yellow. 

While they are tiny, jewelweed flowers are incredibly attractive to bees and hummingbirds.  Hummingbirds will often spend many minutes in a patch of jewelweed hovering over each tiny flower for a sip.  In mid-day a clump of jewelweed will often be buzzing with clouds of bees.

The flowers turn into long, slender seed pods that explode at the slightest touch throwing the tiny, hard, dark seeds far from the plant. The plant is an annual, which readily, some say too readily, reseeds in the garden each year.

Getting started with jewelweed

It can be hard to find seeds or plants to get jewelweed established in your landscape. Some wildflower catalogs may carry the seeds. You can look for ripe seedpods in the fall on wild stands of the plant, and then immediately scatter the tiny seeds in the area you want them to grow.  Don’t worry about covering the seed.  Rain and snow should wash the seeds into the top of the soil. The plants should begin to grow in late spring as the soil begins to warm up.  You could start the seeds inside in pots in early spring, but the seed will need to be stored in a cool place such as a refrigerator for several months before it will germinate.  Plant seedlings outside after the danger of frost has passed.

If you know someone who has jewelweed growing on their property you may be able to get permission to dig up small plants in early summer. The plants are annual, they won’t return the next year. But if you get plants established in early summer, they should shed lots of seeds in early fall and come back in multiples the next year. Remember, however, that jewelweed is considered a native wildflower and you can’t dig it up on public lands. Keep the plants well-watered after transplanting.

The weed part of jewelweed’s name is apt. Once established in a good spot the plant will spread rapidly and may become invasive.  You will never have to worry about finding seeds again if jewelweed likes the home you provided. The plants are easy to pull so thinning the stand to a reasonable number isn’t hard.  Jewelweed doesn’t spread by suckering or the root system, just by seed.

Jewelweed doesn’t seem to suffer from the diseases garden impatiens have, such as downy mildew.  It doesn’t need fertilizer.  It will need to be watered if conditions get dry or the plants look like they are wilting.

Herbal uses

The leaves and stems of jewelweed contain an astringent and a fungicide.  The plant juice was used by Native Americans to heal poison ivy rash and calm the sting of insect bites and stinging nettles. Jewelweed often grows close to poison ivy or nettles.

For a rash or bite, the stems are crushed, and the pulpy liquid is smeared on the rash or bite. However, double blind scientific studies have found jewelweed has no effect on poison ivy rash after it appears. It may be that using it as soon as you contact the plant will wash off or absorb some of the oils before it can cause a rash.

In herbal medicine the juice of crushed plants is boiled with soft fat or lard and is used to cure athlete’s foot and applied to hemorrhoids. The plant, however, should not be eaten or made into tea as it is mildly toxic.

This pretty plant is truly a “jewel” and belongs in the landscape solely for its attraction to bees and hummingbirds if nothing else.  Find a place to tuck some jewelweed into on your property and enjoy the show.

 

Leave the monarchs alone!

I saw a post on social media where a woman was driving somewhere, saw some milkweed, pulled over and looked for monarch eggs on it.  She found a bunch of eggs and removed them all and took them home. People were congratulating her on her “find”.  And this makes me really angry.

A neighbor asked me why some people might be in her field pulling up milkweed.  She didn’t mind the milkweed being taken because milkweed is toxic to livestock, but she didn’t like strangers trespassing on her property. I explained to her the fanatic desire of some people to “rescue” monarch eggs and she laughed. I laughed too, but it’s not funny.

If we thought robins were becoming endangered, do you think we would support people raiding robin’s nests and bringing the eggs home to hatch and raise?  No reputable nature group or government agency would allow that, and you would probably be arrested for doing so. So why aren’t we arresting people who steal monarch eggs?

This raising of monarch caterpillars by everyone needs to stop. People should not be out collecting eggs from wild milkweed and bringing them home to raise in a jar. If you want to plant some milkweed in your yard for monarchs, fine.  But if they lay eggs there, leave them alone, just like most of you would leave a robin’s nest alone that you found in your yard.

People cannot do a better job of raising monarchs than nature does. No matter how hard you try and how well you think you do raising them, you don’t even come close to providing what living in their natural environment does. We don’t need “farmed” monarchs.

It would be interesting to know how many of those snatched eggs sat in the car until they died, got forgotten on a shelf, hatched but the captors were too busy to go out and find milkweed for them to eat, hatched but their kids squished them playing with them and so on.  I bet we would find the death rate staggering. Monarchs are not supposed to be pets or livestock. Caterpillars and butterflies should not be handled.

Yes, the caterpillars die in the wild too. But that is natural and normal.  Nature weeds out the unfit and allows the gene pool of the species to be improved by selection. Researchers have said that captive raised monarchs are often weak and may not know how to migrate. Some have deformed wings and other problems that nature would have eliminated. But being raised in a protective environment allows them to survive and possibly pass on traits that are not helpful to the species.  And lord help us if someone was told to kill a defective caterpillar/butterfly they were raising.

Monarch eggs and caterpillars belong outside on the milkweed, not in a cage in your house. I wish the DNR or some other government agency would state that and start punishing people for collecting eggs and caterpillars. If you want to see one hatch, turn into a chrysalis and then a butterfly, maybe take one or two eggs, not whole plants full of them.  Do not collect from parks, private property and natural areas.

It is not your job to raise monarchs to preserve the species. In fact, if you want to preserve the species it’s your job to leave them alone.  Protect some milkweed if you want to help.  There’s not even a consensus on whether monarchs are endangered, but if they are, it’s extremely important that you LEAVE THEM ALONE!

There’s a whole business now around raising caterpillars of various types. There are cages, equipment, books and sales of eggs going on everywhere. If a species is truly endangered, it should not be raised for sale. If people are out collecting eggs from nature to sell, as some surely are, this is much, much worse. Stop supporting this nonsense.

You are not helping to save the monarchs if you are out stealing eggs laid in the natural environment. You are destroying the species. If they lay eggs in your yard, on milkweed you planted, they still aren’t yours. They are wildlife and wildlife belongs to the state, even if it’s on your property. Leave them alone.

Let’s stop this fable that people are helping save the monarchs by taking them out of nature and rearing them in captivity. You aren’t. If anything, you are destroying the species. Just leave the poor monarchs alone.

 

"...August still stretched before us - long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep."

- Lauren Oliver.

 

 

Kim Willis

All parts of this blog are copyrighted and may not be used without permission.

 

And So On….

 

Find Michigan garden events/classes here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118847598146598/

(This is the Lapeer County Gardeners facebook page)

 

Newsletter/blog information

 

If you have a comment or opinion you’d like to share, send it to me or you can comment directly on the blog. Please state that you want to have the item published in my weekly blog if you email me. You must give your full name and what you say must be polite and not attack any individual. I am very open to ideas and opinions that don’t match mine, but I do reserve the right to publish what I want. Contact me at KimWillis151@gmail.com

 

August 3, 2021 August is a contradiction

My bit of jungle

August is a contradiction, the heat of summer in the day and yet the nights are longer and the time just before dawn chilly and wet with dew. You begin to sense the end of summer, yet the sun and heat can seem glaringly intense in the dog days of summer.  August is good and August is sad.

When you are a child August is the time when you suddenly realize that school is about to begin again, and you better get doing all those things you meant to do in summer. That long bike ride to a new place, learning to swim underwater, building a club house, getting dad to take you to a fair and learning to bake cupcakes better get started or you’ll never get to do them.

When you are a gardener August also seems to wake some sense of urgency to get things you planned way back in April done and yet it also brings a sense of just wanting to rest and enjoy what’s left of summer.  You say, “that’s enough, I’m done,” and grab your book and a glass of lemonade and head to a shady seat. 

You know you should be dividing the iris and getting the tomatoes canned and the vines need to be trimmed off the fence, but you also know it’s hot and you feel lazy, and you just want to slow down and enjoy things.  You want a few days when nothing needs to be watered or picked and you start to remember winter a bit more fondly. Well maybe not winter, but October, when the harvest is done, and frost has made watering a thing of the past.

This is the last true month of summer and if ever there was a time to enjoy it, it’s now. So, get out that book and that glass of whatever cold beverage pleases your palate and just get outside and enjoy it.

We are having great weather for the first days of August here. The garden phlox is spilling great globes of purple and white here and there and the golden glow against it is great color. The golden glow is more upright than it usually is so maybe the cut back did some good. These may be old and not so popular perennials, but they have stood the test of time and they do add that late summer color.

Another oldie but goodie in bloom is ‘Only the Lonely’ or woodland nicotiana.  It has great big clumps of tobacco leaf foliage (it is a tobacco cousin) and tall candelabras of white trumpet shaped flowers with a heavenly scent. It comes back reliably from seed every year. Usually, I have some that start growing in early spring in houseplant pots that were outside the previous year. This gives me a head start on flowers as the seeds that come up outside tend to produce very late blooming plants.

The wildflower mix I scattered is producing some blooms, all cosmos so far, the yellow and orange variety. The odd little plant I tried this year, Anoda, with it’s silky white cupped flowers, is going strong. It’s about 3 feet tall and maybe 2 feet wide per plant.  The flowers face upward and are maybe 2 inches across. It’s an annual but I won’t mind if it reseeds itself.

My seed grown nasturtiums and calendula are just starting to bloom.  The zinnias have been blooming but I am not impressed with them.  Everything in that bed has to compete with the darn sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes).  I tried to dig them all out this spring but that was a laugh. You can’t get rid of those things.

The rudbeckia and yellow quill mum are competing with the shasta daisy right now for attention. Tiger lilies are in bloom and the latest of the oriental lilies. There are still daylilies and roses blooming.  The clematis by the barn has a fresh batch of bloom. Dahlias and cannas are in bloom.

The hopniss vine is in bloom with it’s chocolate-colored curly flowers. It has covered a whole section of fence 8 feet high, and it creeps everywhere trying to establish new territory.  Trumpet vine is blooming everywhere too, which the hummers like.

Hopniss flowers

Our grapes are sizing up nicely, and the Japanese beetles haven’t been bad here so far so maybe we’ll get grapes this year. We are getting plenty of big juicy tomatoes now, some cukes and peppers. I see two tiny watermelon growing but no cantaloupe.  I harvested some garlic this week.

 

August means it’s time to check your trees for Asian Long horn beetle

August is the time when damage from the Asian Longhorned beetle (ALB) is most easily seen, and APHIS is asking homeowners to check their trees in August and report any signs of the beetle.  Those in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and South Carolina are most likely to find ALB damage but people in all states should check because sporadic cases have been found elsewhere.  The beetle larvae can also be moved in firewood.

Asian Longhorn beetle
Credit Michigan.gov

ALB are invasive beetles from China and other parts of Asia. If they spread, there may be widespread death of many kinds of trees.  We don’t want a repeat of the Emerald Ash Borer, which has eliminated Ash trees in many states.

Asian Longhorned beetles feed on trees, with their larvae tunneling into the cambian layer and disrupting the flow of food and water. This eventually kills the trees. They will feed on at least 12 types of hardwood trees, including maple, sycamore, willow, elm, horse chestnut, ash and birches.

The Asian longhorn beetle is about 1 ½ inches long and shiny black with white dots on the back. They are called longhorn because their antenna are longer than their body. The antenna are striped black and white. The legs and feet of the beetles often look blue.

Other signs ALB are around include round exit holes in the trunks of trees that are dime size or smaller.  This is where an adult beetle emerges from.  You may also see frass, a sawdust like material, around these holes, or beneath the trees or on branches. Tree limbs that fall off a tree in absence of storms is another clue.

The ALB beetle makes small round or oval shallow holes in tree bark to lay its eggs. The spots may leak tree sap.

An egg scrape and an exit hole 
Credit Michigan.gov

If you think you see adult beetles or damage to trees try to get clear, close pictures of the damage or beetle. If you can capture beetles, put them in something and freeze them. Do not put them in alcohol.  Then contact APHIS at the ALB hotline at 1-866-702-9938 or by submitting an online report at www.AsianLonghornedBeetle.com

 

Do your part to save American trees and scout your trees and neighborhood for ALB. 

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/planthealth/plant-pest-and-disease-programs/pests-and-diseases/asian-longhorned-beetle

 

Deer can carry covid 19

Here’s another reason to keep deer out of your yard.  The USDA released a report last week that states that deer can carry covid, although they do not appear sick.  The USDA has been testing deer in several states and found many positive cases of covid. In Michigan 60% of the deer tested had it.

No one is sure how deer caught the disease, and no one is sure if they can pass it back to humans, although they believe that is certainly possible.  Having a reservoir of the virus in the deer population is not a good thing. The disease may go through another mutation and then jump back to humans.

How could you catch covid from a deer? Well, my little brat of a dog illustrated one way. He loves to roll in deer poop.  I have to take him to the shower quickly after such episodes. Covid is shed in feces so if you handle a dog after it’s rolled in deer poop- or worse a dead deer- you could get the virus. Feces could also contaminate fruits or vegetables people consume.

Please don’t feed the deer and exclude them from your garden as that’s just another way of feeding them.  When deer eat in close proximity to each other they pass on many diseases.  Don’t handle fawns or move dead deer with bare hands.

If deer regularly munch on your veggies make sure to thoroughly wash all produce- you should do that anyway. If you have deer damage to flowers wear gloves when repairing the damage. Make your children wash their hands well after playing in yards where deer roam.

I don’t know what will happen with hunting season this year. It will probably be allowed because cooking will destroy any virus.  But handling the carcass will be a problem.

From APHIS for more info

Questions and Answers: Results of Study on SARS-CoV-2 in White-Tailed Deer.

 

Don’t forget about the houseplants

 Maybe your houseplants are outside for a vacation, maybe they are still inside, but now is a good time to look them over and do any needed maintenance.  We often forget about the houseplants when our world is filled with outside plants needing our attention.

Check those plants vacationing outside to make sure they are getting enough water or to see if they need draining because they are getting too much.  Because the angle of the light is changing make sure houseplants aren’t getting too much light and burning or if they are getting too much shade now.  You may have to move them.

Plants still indoors might like to be moved outside to a shady spot for just a few hours while you give them a gentle shower from the hose. If you could time the shower to be during a soft steady rainfall outside that would be even better. The shower will wash dust off the plants and might help remove pests too. 

It’s a good time to “leach” the potting soil, by letting water run through the pot and out the drainage holes. This can remove any built-up salts and thoroughly moisten the soil again.  (If your houseplants have been outside all summer, they may not need this.)

If your plants need to be repotted now is the time to do it, while you can keep the mess outside. Remember to always choose pots with drainage holes and don’t put plants in new pots that are more than 2 inches wider and 4” deeper than the old one. If the pot is too large it often gets incorrectly watered, and either the water runs down out of reach of the roots or the whole pot stays too wet because the plants can’t take up enough water and roots rot.

If you pull the plant out of the pot and find a solid mass of tangled roots with virtually no soil remaining, you’ll need to do some root washing and detangling. Gently hose off any remaining soil from the roots and examine them. Tease them apart with your fingers and spread the roots out a bit. You can safely cut off a big, thick matted section in the bottom of a pot.

Use potting medium, not garden soil for houseplants.  It’s lighter and is less likely to have pests in it like slug eggs, ants, and flies.  August is still a good time to fertilize plants if they look spindly and weak or you want them to grow vigorously.

Be thinking about where you will move those houseplants when it’s time to bring them inside, which is only a few weeks away now.  Some will be bigger than when you put them outside. If you think you may need grow lights get them ordered now.  They will be harder to find later.

 

August almanac

 The Great Lakes Native Americans called this month’s full moon on August 22^nd, the Sturgeon moon, because that was when these large, tasty fish were easily caught in the Great Lakes.  In other places this month’s full moon is known as the Green Corn moon or the blueberry moon.  Today is the 216^th day of the year.

If you want to see or catch a falling star this is the month to do it. The Perseid Meteor showers peak will be the night of August 11-12^th and the 12-13^th.  At the peak you should be able to see 60-75 “falling stars” an hour, about one a minute. The meteors are the dust and debris in the tail of the comet Swift-Tuttle.  You won’t see the comet, but you may see Mars and Saturn.  The meteor showers continue to be visible until August 26^th. 

 Go out after midnight, look north and give your eyes a chance to adjust to the dark when watching for meteors. You should be able to see meteors in all parts of the sky though if north is obstructed. It will be a good year to see the meteors since the moon will set early, leaving the skies dark. The showers seem to intensify between midnight and just before dawn.

 The August birth flower is the gladiolus. When glads are given to someone they signify remembrance and integrity, perhaps that is why gladiolus are frequently found in funeral arrangements.  The August birthstone is the peridot- a beautiful green gem.

August is National Peach month, National Picnic month, Family Fun month and National Catfish month.  The 9^th is National Book Lovers day and the 10^th is National Lazy Day. The 13^th is Left Handers day, the 14^th is Creamsicle day, the 21^st is national Seniors day, and the 26^th is National Dog day.  The 29^th is More Herbs day. August 31^st is International Bacon day.

 

 

Gladiolus

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer... like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning."

―Natalie Babbitt.

 

Kim Willis

All parts of this blog are copyrighted and may not be used without permission.

 

And So On….

 

Find Michigan garden events/classes here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118847598146598/

(This is the Lapeer County Gardeners facebook page)

 

Newsletter/blog information

 

If you have a comment or opinion you’d like to share, send it to me or you can comment directly on the blog. Please state that you want to have the item published in my weekly blog if you email me. You must give your full name and what you say must be polite and not attack any individual. I am very open to ideas and opinions that don’t match mine, but I do reserve the right to publish what I want. Contact me at KimWillis151@gmail.com