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| My bit of jungle |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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
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
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 11-12th and the 12-13th. 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 26th.
August is National Peach month, National Picnic month, Family Fun month and National Catfish month. The 9th is National Book Lovers day and the 10th is National Lazy Day. The 13th is Left Handers day, the 14th is Creamsicle day, the 21st is national Seniors day, and the 26th is National Dog day. The 29th is More Herbs day. August 31st 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
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And So On….
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