All things green

While we were out hoeing the pumpkins a few days ago, I came across a familiar but unwelcome site… a cluster of tiny,  hard objects on one of the leaves.  I knew what it was immediately, we have had these before.  It was a egg mass from a Squash Bug.

I told my helpers to be on the look out for them. Usually the eggs  are found on the under side of a leaf.

They can also be found on a stem or anywhere else on the plant.

Squash Bugs feed on all members of the Squash family of plants, pumpkins included.

I asked my helpers to count the number of egg mass as we set out to smash them by hand.  I was curious about how many there were and thought that you might be interested as well.

We have three 75 foot rows of pumpkins planted into black plastic mulch. The first row had about 75 egg masses, the middle row had 45 egg masses, while the last row had 85 eggs masses.  Each egg mass ranged from a dozen to over 25 individual eggs per clutch.  Anyway you do the math, that would have been a lot of Squash Bugs feeding on our plants!

Our vines were about this long at the time of counting:

The easiest way to look for those bugs is to raise up the entire vine (or roll it over) and check each leaf.  The eggs are very easy to spot.

The Squash Bugs feed by sucking the juice out of the plant. after which the leaves turn brittle and begin to turn brown. The number of bugs that would have hatched could have caused us a major drop in yield or possibly even a crop failure.

Here’s a portrait of  Mama Bug:

Smash her too while you’re at it !  This one oozed out an unusual iridescent blue color when crushed. I’ll spare you the gory photo

Squash Bugs like to hide  from their enemies by crawling under debris. You can use this to your advantage by placing a board near your plant and leaving it over night. By morning, the bugs will have crawled under the board to hide (not knowing that it was you who placed it there).  Lift up the board and dispatch any you find.

Our problem is that we have plastic mulch that they like to hide under and couldn’t  care less about any  board.

While they will do a lot of damage to your squash and pumpins, the good news is that they only breed once a year.

I’ll check the plants now and then to take care of any bugs we may have missed.

Bob

I’d like to share with you a new (to me anyway) flower that we are growing in the perennial garden. It’s called Bupthalum (sometimes spelled Buphthalum).

Our Bupthalum has been blooming since the last week of June and is still going strong.

The plants themselves stand over 4 feet tall, so you need to have a fairly large space for them or plant them at the back of your garden.

We purchased the seed from Thompson and Morgan Seed company last winter. They seem to be fairly easy to grow. The packet had 50 seeds in it and I counted over 40 plants out in the garden this summmer… not a bad average. They also seem to be very hardy and are able to compete very well against weeds.  They will not wimp out and die back at the first sign of stress.

After three weeks of blooming the center of the blossoms are begining to turn a warm shade of brown, giving them a “whole ‘nother look”.

Bupthalum will give you plenty of enjoyment year after year for just a few cents for seeds and a little time to get them started.

Bob

I was out in the vegetable garden the other day and noticed that none of our Broccoli or other cabbage-type plants have any insect damage at all.

Apparently the weather conditions have not been very good for the Cabbage Looper or other cabbage pests which is very good news for the Broccoli plants.

I did happen to spot the first Cabbage butterfly in our garden on Tuesday. This is the culprit that lays the eggs that develops into those destructive cabbage worms.

She and her sisters were not on the Broccoli just yet. I caught them feeding on nectar from our Salvia flowers. Here she alighted on a Hydrangea leaf just long enough for me to get this long distance snapshot.

Notice the distinguishing characteristics: all white with a dark spot on each wing. You often see them in small groups fluttering about in the garden.

If you see them landing on your cabbage and related plants, I guarantee that eggs are being laid and those destructive worms will start munching on your plants real soon.

You can deal with these insects in a couple of non-chemical ways. First you can cover your plants with a thin garden cloth called “floating row covers”, this will keep the butterflies from even reaching your plants in the first place, so no eggs will be laid on the leaves.  The other way is to spray the plants with a biological based material called BT.  BT will not kill the butterflies, but will kill the worms as they begin to feed.  Check at the garden centers for these products.

So…heads up.

Bob

There are still a few Cottonwood seeds floating around today. I think this is just about the end of them for this year.

It apparently has been a great year for Cottonwood seed production. The seed crop was the biggest I have ever seen.

Look at the seeds on this tree, the masses of seeds are as big as pie plates!

We didn’t get to enjoy all the floating cotton as much because of all of the high winds we experienced during the peak of Cottonwood season.

I actually enjoy watching Cottonwood seeds float by… there is something soothing about it. Yes, they can collect in piles at times. This seems to upset some people, especially the “neat nicks” among us.

To me, it’s a reminder of when I was a child. Those floaters meant we were really in summer and school wouldn’t be starting for a long, long time.

Bob

With all of the hustle and bustle of planting 1000’s of flowers and vegetables these past couple of weeks, I almost missed the show that my Passion Flower was putting on.

I planted this from seed about three years ago, this is the first time it has flowered. There are three Passion Flower plants in the green house.

The actual flowers themselves are borne on a vine. Each flower seems to last a day or so then another takes its place. As you can see, they are very impressive, complex-looking blossoms.

These are the same plants that produce Passion fruit, which is used by some people as a mild, fruity tranquilizer.

Even though they look very exotic to us northerners, they grow wild mostly in the southeast states and South America. There are some species that are hardy enough to grow as far north as Tennessee and southern Pennsylvania. I don’t know what variety I have.

For those folks in the south this all may seem mundane, but up here in Michigan…it’s a heck of a lot of fun!

Bob

Over the weekend I needed to harvest a large bag of spinach.  There were two ways I could have done this, either pull the entire plant out by the root or pinch off leaves one at a time.

I prefer using the second method. This allows the plant to keep producing if the growing conditions are right.

The problem was that I had injured my hand a couple of weeks ago and the pinching motion really hurt my finger.  Using a pair of scissors  could have been used, but then I would have needed two hands… one to snip the leaf and the other to hold it and put it in the bag.

It came to me out of the blue… there was a way I could snip the spinach leaf and pop it into the bag all with one hand in one smooth motion, I would just use my Fiskars that I normally use for cutting flowers.

This handy little tool resembles a pair of scissors. It has a cutting blade and a springy clamp that gently holds the stem of the flower you are cutting.  This allows you to reach into a bed to cut a flower with only one hand.

I found out it works just as well on Spinach!

Bob

This year we have been fortunate to have a nice cool spring with a gradual warm up ( if you don’t count today).

One of the nice things about a cool spring, like the one we have experienced this year, is the way all of the spring flowers have lasted and lasted.

Remember all of those bulbs that were planted last fall?  (How We Plant Bulbs) Well, this year we really got to enjoy them. Last year the tulips were exposed to some unseasonably warm temperatures and only flowered for about three days. It took us longer to plant them than that!

Contrast that with this year’s flower display. Here is a photo of part of our bulbs. They are at about 80% blooming when this photo was taken.

These are tulips in the upper beds with Grape Hyacinths in the fore-ground.

A close up shot of those Grape Hyacinths.

Now you know what to say the next time a non-gardener complains about a cool spring!

Bob

Finally it feels like spring! I don’t mind this slightly cool weather. I seem to be able to work longer. Heat in the early spring is too much for me. So this is ideal for me to get my big pots planted that I put out on the extensive terrace that we have at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

The pots range in size from 2-3 gallons up to big square pots that are 2 ft sqaure by 2 1/2 ft. tall. I use more than 30 pots all together.

I’m using different soilless mixes this year. I can’t stress how important that is for growing plants in pots. Soilless mixes work so much better because real soil tends to compact too much in pots. Soilless mixes stay looser so roots have an easier time growing, get more air plus the peat moss and shredded bark in the mix holds moisture very well.

We are opting to use mixes with less peat moss and more shredded bark. The bark is a renewable crop while peat moss is being mined faster than it is be produced. Because it takes even longer than growing trees!

So I am using Metro Mix 380 and also Farard 52 mix. I’ll let you know the results at the end of the summer. I have the pots marked, as to which pot has which soil and I will compare how well they grow. I think I will have to fertilize differently but don’t know for sure yet. I will investigate the fertilizer requirements for the soilless mixes, and I’ll let you know

I usually fertilize every two to three weeks with a soluble fertilizer like Peterson’s or Miracle Grow. Don’t use fertilizer made for lawns. It has too much nitrogen and your plants will get to tall and floppy and more inviting to insect attack. I also use time released fertilizer pellets when I first plant. But don’t expect the timed released fertilizer to last all summer. It breaks down very rapidly when temperature are above 70 degrees.

Fertilizing that often , gives me great results. My coleus and cannas cause a lot of “oohs and ahs” when people see them. The coleus gets two and a half feet tall and nice and bushy and the cannas get 6 -7 ft tall in pots!

We could still get another frost so I won’t put anything out yet. I keep mine in the greenhouse but you could keep yours in a garage by a window or in the house by a window. If they are small enough and you have the energy put them out in partial sunlight on nice days but don’t forget to bring them in at night. You could start a number of plants in smaller pots to give them a head start and then transfer them to your biggest pots when you are ready to put them out. This year it doesn’t even look like I will put them out for Memorial day! It is still too cool at night.

So we may have to wait to enjoy our summer flowers but have you noticed that the spring flowers like daffodils and wild geranium and tulips are lasting longer this spring. One flower’s loss is another flower’s gain!

Bye for now, Judy

The warmth of May along with our spring rain is waking up the asparagus.

We picked some last week in one of the asparagus beds. That bed is in a protected area on a southern slope so it always comes up quicker than the other bed which is in a damp area on a slight northern slope.  There are no signs of life yet in that second bed.

There seems to be some argument on the proper method of harvesting asparagus. One camp argues that you simply snap off the asparagus spear with your bare hand.  The other group favors cutting the spear with a knife.

Actually, both methods are correct. In a small home garden, simply breaking the spear off at the soil line works just fine. The small stub left behind usually dries up and disappears.

Farmers who grow asparagus to sell, always use a knife of some sort.  The most common tool used resembles a dandelion weeder.  The knife is used to carefully cut the spear just below the soil line.

If you opt for the knife method, be careful not to cut too deeply, as there is a chance you will damage nearby buds.  It is these buds from which the asparagus spear grows.

The ideal time  to cut an asparagus spear is when it reaches about 6 to 8 inches or so in length.

It is always a good idea to cut all growth from the asparagus bed once you start harvesting.  If a spear is left to grow, the Asparagus Beetle will lay eggs on it.  These beetles hatch and grow very quickly and can do a lot of damage to tender young asparagus spears later in the season.

Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to cut off the tip of the spear and leave the remaining stalk still attached to the root.

Keep harvesting asparagus until the spears start to get smaller, the diameter of a pencil or so.  Then let them grow from that point so they can replenish their roots for next year’s crop.

Now, here is a box of asparagus we harvested this week.

They are really too long for the entire spear to be usable. The base of the spears are tough and stringy.  To correct this problem, simply grab the asparagus near the bottom 1/3 and break it off.  The spear will break just above the stringy part, so there is no guessing on where to cut it. Toss the lower tough part into your compost bin.

The fact that you can harvest a crop from your garden so early in the spring makes this one of my favorite vegetables to grow.

Bob

There’s only 4 weeks left until Memorial Day! And yet they are forecasting snow showers for Monday and Tuesday!

My tomato seedlings are up and 3″ tall already. Pepper’s are up, too. I’m lucky to have a heated bench at the greenhouse. That speeds germination along . It makes such a difference. But a heating mat at home would do as well. Johnny’s Select Seeds and Seeds of Change both carry heating mats in their catalogs. You’ll want to keep that in mind for next year. Though who knows we may have a late cold spring.

If you started tomatoes and peppers right now, they should be big enough by the 2nd week of June. Which the way we’re going this year may be just the right time to put them out. If you put tomatoes and pepers out and they get chilled , it can stall their growth. Wait till the nights stay above 50 degrees. Unless you have protection that will keep the soil’s heat in.

For the past 16 years I have only used “soilless” potting mix for starting seeds and potting up my seedlings. so I’ve never had to worry about “damping off”, a disease that causes the stems of brand new seedlings to collapse and the plant to die. If you use garden soil or potting mix with real soil in it, (unless its been totally sterilized) you will be taking the chance that the “damping off ” disease organism is there in the soil and may infect your seedlings.

Once your seeds have germinated they need as much sunlight as you can give them in the house. Other wise they will get long and weak stems.

Don’t keep your seedlings too moist. Let the very top of your soil look a little dry before you water again.

If you notice little black “flies” coming off your soil around your seedlings (or any other houseplant for that matter), they you are keeping your soil too wet. Those are fungus gnats. If the infestation gets too severe it will stunt your seedlings because the larvae of the fungus gnat is a grub in the soil that may chew on your seedlings roots.

With 4 weeks to go till Memorial Day, it’s time to start seeds like annual coreopsis, cleome, zinnia, marigolds 4 O’Clocks, nasturtium and annual phlox.

During last weeks warm spell it was probably tempting to buy some annuals at the garden centers. If you did, keep those plants away from the frost. It’s forecasted to go down to 34 degrees Monday night.

Bye for now. Happy growing! Judy