August Gardening Advice for Manchester
Editor’s note: Manchester resident, Jennifer Fairfield, owns and operates the Garden Mill in Chelsea, serves on the Manchester Community Garden Committee, and volunteers with the school gardens at Klager and the MECC.
Garden Friend – photo courtesy of Jennifer Fairfield.
by Jennifer Fairfield
Well OK – summer has finally arrived! And not a moment too soon, as far as my tomatoes and eggplants are concerned. The cooler weather we had all through July made warm weather-loving plants a bit unhappy, and slowed their production down a bit. My green beans were producing like crazy, and then just kind of stopped for a little bit, but now they’re back again. And there’s hope that my tomatoes might actually ripen before the early blight they have contracted takes down the plants. The hot dry temperatures help to keep the disease from spreading, perhaps giving the fruit time to ripen – as long as it doesn’t get too hot! When it gets above about 85°, tomatoes can actually stop ripening. Sometimes, it can be maddening to be a gardener, but I still love it!
And by the way – the Farmer’s Almanac was only partially right last month. They predicted warmer and drier than normal, but it was actually a little cooler than normal. The Ann Arbor area’s average high temperature for July this year was only 79 degrees, whereas our normal average is around 83. However, we only saw about 2.5 inches of rain last month, and we typically get in excess of 3.5 inches. I think I’m just going to sit back and see what August brings us. It’s not like I can do anything about it anyway!
This month, I am finding all kinds of creatures in my garden. The list includes lots of good guys (including bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds) along with the bad guys. The picture at the top of this newsletter is of a cute little friend (he’s only about the size of my thumbnail!) I found hanging out in my edamame beans. I’m hoping he grows up soon so that he can eat the other guys who have been hanging out there — the Japanese beetles! Until then, I’ll have to deal with them and all of the other pests myself.
August To-Dos:
I know I am repeating myself, but water really is the most important thing to be keeping an eye on this month. As it gets warmer, and tends to be drier, you will want to make sure your vegetable garden is getting watered every other day that we are not getting rain. Drying out causes stress for your plants, which leaves them more vulnerable to disease, and disease can kill them off before you have a chance to get any fruit. If you’ve gotten this far, you certainly don’t want to lose out on all those wonderful tastes now! Your perennials also need regular watering, and be sure to water your container plants daily, or at least every-other day. Or better yet – get a drip irrigation system and put it on a timer! It takes the hassle out of watering by hand.
Getting to eat what your plants are producing now is the best part of having a vegetable garden. Make sure you keep up with your harvesting, though. If you don’t pick things like cucumbers, squash, and beans as they become mature, the plants will stop producing more fruits and concentrate instead on maturing seeds. Picking what’s there will keep more coming.
To extend your harvesting into fall, take time now to plant things such as leaf lettuces, radishes, spinach, beets, and Swiss chard. Check the “days to maturity” information on the packet of seeds to make sure that the variety that you are considering will have time to germinate and mature before frosts get started.
Crabgrass – photo courtesy of Jennifer Fairfield.
I promised a customer recently not to tell her to weed this month, but I have to go back on that promise! The weeds have been out of control this year, especially the crabgrass – at least at my house. I’m not too worried about the crabgrass or most other weeds in my lawn, as I really wouldn’t have a lawn if not for the weeds. However, I have had more crabgrass in my flower beds, vegetable garden, and even my driveway this year than I ever remember. There are also lots of other weeds vying for our attention this month, and we really do need to keep after them in order to allow the plants we do want to continue to thrive. But pick your battles. If the weed isn’t causing any harm where it is (if like me, you don’t have the perfect lawn, and are OK with that), then deal with the weeds in your gardens, and let the others be. Life’s too short to spend all your time on weeds, and changing how you look at weeds can help you deal with them. I just tell myself that dandelions are tiny sunflowers, and it makes everything better!
If you really want a great-looking lawn though, much like everything else, keeping it healthy is the key to keeping it looking good. A healthy lawn starts with mowing it a little high. Michigan State University Extension Service recommends mowing at a height of at least 3 inches (but preferably 3.5 to 4), and they explain why in this great article. In short, higher mowing helps promote healthy roots that can outcompete weeds and better tolerate grubs (more on grubs in a minute). Another important element of a healthy lawn is proper fertilization, and the only way to be certain that you are giving your lawn what it really needs is a soil test. MSU Extension offers a soil test kit for $25 that they will mail you with instructions for how to do the test and where to send your samples. You will get back a very detailed report on the current condition of your soil and recommendations for what to do to make sure your lawn is as healthy as can be. They also do testing of soil for vegetable and flower gardens, as well as trees and shrubs. Find the information on this great service here.
Don’t forget to keep up the deadheading of your perennial and annual flowers this month. Keeping them cleaned up will help to keep their blooms going strong.
August is the month when many garden pests are at their peak, and this year seems to be no exception. I am finding all kinds of things helping themselves to my plants right now, including some I can’t quite identify, like this little guy. I found him/her in the sweet potato vine growing in one of the patio pots on my porch. I think it’s in the katydid family, but am not 100% sure. If anybody knows, I’d love an accurate identification!
Katydid? – photo courtesy of Jennifer Fairfield.
I am also finding tomato hornworms, Japanese beetles, striped cucumber beetles, grasshoppers, and earwigs everywhere. Earwigs are a favorite bug to hate for a very dear friend of mine. She really can’t stand them – both to look at and because of the damage they do to her flowers. They are a rather obnoxious creature, coming out in the dark of night and leaving holes all over the foliage and flowers of many types of plants. They also will bore into the fruit of things like zucchini, making the squash unappetizing, at best, for us to eat. One of the best cures for earwigs is the same as for one of my least favorite pests, the slug – diatomaceous earth. There are other things you can do for earwigs, including eliminating the places they hide out during the day or giving them places to go like rolled up newspaper, and disposing of the newspaper in the morning, when they have crawled in to take shelter from the heat of the day. Insecticidal soap sprayed directly on them can be effective as well.
Tomato hornworms can be amazingly destructive and elusive critters. I noticed some minor damage on one of my tomato plants that I suspected of being caused by a hornworm, but couldn’t find any of them, so figured I must be wrong. A few days later, another of my tomato plants had obvious signs of a tomato hornworm feeding on it – entire leaves taken down to just a stub protruding from the stem. The other tell-tale sign was the dark green pellets of excrement they leave behind. That is actually the easiest way to find where the offending caterpillar is – look around and above where you see the droppings, and you will likely find the pest. They are hard to spot because they blend in so well with the green of the branches and leaves that they are feeding on, but a keen eye will eventually find them. And you do want to find them, as they can easily defoliate an entire plant if left alone. The best way to deal with these guys is to pick them off your plant and squish them, though I will sometimes put them into one of the bird feeders farthest from my garden, to give the birds a treat!
Tomato Hornworm – photo courtesy of Jennifer Fairfield.
Cucumber beetles come in two varieties – spotted and striped – but they both do the same damage. They eat most squash plants as well as cucumber plants, and along with potentially destroying young seedlings early on, can transmit bacterial wilt and cucumber mosaic disease, so it’s important to the health of your garden to keep them under control. Prevention early in the season is the best way. This can include covering your seedlings with floating row covers to keep the insects from getting to your plants (though you will want to remove the covers as the plants mature so that flowers can be pollinated), and putting down mulch at the time of transplanting, so that the females can’t lay their eggs in the soil. If, however, you’re seeing them at this time of year, as I am, the best defense is yellow sticky traps. The insects are attracted to the yellow, and get stuck to the traps, which you can then dispose of. Growing radishes or nasturtiums nearby can also help to repel them.
The grasshoppers in my yard don’t seem to be causing me too much trouble, but I recently had some customers asking about how to control them, as they were apparently a really big problem for them. Grasshoppers can be a problem for a number of reasons. Though many eat grasses primarily, which includes cash crops such as wheat, in the home vegetable garden, you can find grasshoppers helping themselves to your lettuces, carrots, beans, and onions. Some varieties of grasshoppers also like flowers, and in years when the populations are highest, they will also feed on trees and shrubs. The problem with controlling them is that they move very quickly and easily, and so spraying things directly on them, such as insecticidal soap, is difficult to impossible. One organic option is something you will find under the brand names of NOLO Bait or Semaspore (Nosema locustae). It causes an infection in the grasshopper that eventually kills them, but only works on young grasshoppers and is slow to work, so will not solve an immediate problem of adult infestation. Permethrin, which goes by many names, is widely available, and can be used on most fruits and vegetables, but has only limited success in controlling grasshoppers. Sevin has been shown to be somewhat effective, but I am not about to spray that on anything I’m planning to eat! Other insecticides that can be effective are only available to licensed pesticide applicators, and are not for home use. If you have plants that don’t need to be pollinated, or are willing to hand-pollinate, you could try floating row covers – just be sure to put them on before your plants are infested, or you could be trapping the insects in with your plants! I wish I could offer better advice on how to deal with these guys, but they are a very difficult pest to manage. Oh – one option I almost forgot to mention was chickens! Chickens and ducks love to eat grasshoppers, as well as lots of other insects, so you might consider having a few for pest control.
My least favorite pest in the garden at the moment is Japanese beetles. I really don’t like them! They are voracious eaters of almost any kind of plant, but mostly seem to be enjoying my edamame and green beans at the moment. There is only one really effective way of dealing with them in the home garden, and that’s to keep a bucket of soapy water around so that you can brush the beetles off your plants and into the water whenever you see them. They apparently like to tell all their friends when they’ve found a good place to dine, so getting rid of the few when you first see them prevents them from inviting the whole gang over to your place for dinner.
Japanese beetles – photo courtesy of Jennifer Fairfield.
There are also ways to prevent next year’s infestation of Japanese beetles, but you have to make sure to get the timing right. Female Japanese beetles lay eggs in late summer, and the eggs and grubs need moisture to survive. If you let your lawn go dormant in the late summer, as it naturally will when it gets dry, your lawn will be inhospitable to them, so you may not see as many adults next year.
If you have seen a lot of the adults and you have a well-irrigated lawn, then you will likely end up with grubs. In that case, you can try treating your lawn with beneficial nematodes in August, when the grubs are small. Be sure to follow the instructions for using these very carefully – especially the parts about irrigating the lawn before and after application. Another non-chemical option for grubs is milky spore. This has had limited success in some areas, but apparently good success in others. The biggest drawback to this method is that it can take 2 to 3 years to really get the job done, and you can’t use any insecticides to treat the grubs in the meantime.
There are, of course, some chemicals on the market that can be used to treat grubs, though I am not a fan. I used nematodes a few years ago, when we had a particularly heavy infestation of the beetles, and I have definitely not seen as many beetles in the ensuing years. I can’t say for sure whether the nematodes are the sole reason for the decline, but I think it certainly helped. These days, the number of beetles I’m seeing is low enough for me to be able to handle them with my trusty bucket of soapy water.
The last thing I am going to say about insects is that there are lots of good ones too. Many of them help to keep the bad ones under control. So, keep the insecticide use to a minimum so as to not harm the ones that are helping you. We often talk about honeybees and butterflies when we are talking about beneficial insects, but there are lots of others that are helping out. For instance, according to Smithsonian Magazine, dragonflies can eat up to hundreds of mosquitoes in a day! But since dragonflies are also insects, anything sprayed in your garden to kill insects can also kill them.
OK, I do actually have one more thing to say about insects – encouraging birds to come to your yard can be very helpful in controlling insects, as most birds will happily eat them. Providing birds with clean water for drinking and bathing is a terrific way to get them to hang around your yard. Many birds are especially attracted to moving water, so if you already have a birdbath, consider putting in a fountain or mister to catch the attention of passing birds.
Speaking of birdbaths, keep them clean! Birds are always looking for good sources of drinking and bathing water, and keeping them clean can help keep the birds healthy.
I know I said it last month, but please do remember to keep your hummingbird feeders cleaned out. This heat will speed up the growth of bacteria and fungus in these feeders, which can be dangerous to those beautiful flying jewels.
Dandelions – think of them as tiny sunflowers! – photo courtesy of Jennifer Fairfield
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