Hort Blog

The Raised Bed Club

2012-01-26T11:47:00.000-05:00

My pal Harry called recently to tell me that he had located some rough cut, white oak boards to build raised garden beds. We discussed board dimensions, how to fasten them together, what to fill the new beds with. I knew that Harry was about to become a member of the Raised Bed Club. I have been a member for about 15 years and it is probably the single most productive gardening step I’ve ever taken. I’ll outline some of the benefits and details here. If you want to take your vegetable gardening to another level, consider raised beds.

So, what’s the big deal with raised beds? For many of us (and certainly my original motivation) it is to gain the ability to garden in poorly drained soils… or to get access to garden soil earlier in the season. Raising the soil profile even a few inches creates gravitational pull on water that leaves it better drained. Many folks think that it is the media in the bed that is creating all of that drainage, and to certain extent, it does play a role. But even raising the existing soil on a site improves drainage dramatically. And if you are worrying about the task of importing a lot of stuff to fill you new raised bed… stop. You can accomplish a lot by simply using the existing soil.

Now, to talk out of both sides of my mouth, as they say…. let’s not ignore the potential to really improve soil texture and structure by amending that stuff we’ll fill those beds with. If you can add good organic matter to your existing garden soil in a raised bed you will see additional benefits. Where do you go for good organic matter? It’s everywhere. If you live in Southeastern Pennsylvania you are within an hour’s drive of some of the best compost money can buy. And sometimes it’s free! Spent mushroom compost is a beautiful thing. Many garden centers sell it. As you get closer to Kennet Square in Chester County it becomes more plentiful and cheaper. Since this stuff is often a waste product of the mushroom industry, there are mountains of it. It is simply the growing medium that several crops of mushrooms have been living in. It is high in organic matter and nutrients. Mix about 25 % mushroom compost, by volume, into even the crummiest soil and you have a decent growing media. Sure, do a soil test after you make this mix and adjust as necessary but that mushroom soil is nutrient rich and near neutral pH.

Composted leaves are stockpiled in many communities. While these will be less nutrient rich than mushroom compost, they do provide wonderful soil textural qualities. Again, adding about 25 %, by volume, is a good start.

Manure is magnificent. Find one of those old barnyard piles that has been ageing like a fine wine and you have hit the jackpot.

OK you get the idea. Find some organic matter. Amend your existing soil by incorporating about 25 % of what you can find with the existing soil. Then soil test and adjust fertility as needed. This will get you started. As time goes by you will fine tune that media in the beds. It will settle and shrink over time so yearly additions are needed.

Some garden centers and mulch suppliers sell a garden soil mix in bulk, by the cubic yard. Most will deliver. Tell them your bed dimensions and they will tell you how much you need. A bed that measures 8 feet by 3 feet by 9 inches will require 18 cubic feet… less than a cubic yard (27 square feet).

Rock raised bed

Wooden boards are probably material most people use to construct beds but many things can do the job. Rocks work. So do concrete blocks. I suppose you could use the fancy fake rock wall materials that are so popular. Metal, plastic, you name it. In fact, a raised bed can be borderless if you’d like. But the tidiness of wooden raised beds is nice. What kind of wood? Since there will definitely be contact with soil, a rot resistant wood is important if you want the beds to last more than a couple of years. Pressure treated wood sold these days does not contain arsenic.

Borderless Bed

Copper is used instead to resist the rots. Got old pressure treated wood with arsenic? There is pretty good evidence that this does not pose a great threat, but if you are going to spend one moment worrying about it (or trying to convince someone else who eats from your garden that all is fine by explaining the chemical qualities of arsenic) maybe it is a better idea to make a set of stairs out of those old pressure treated boards.

Black Locust Beds

Or… you can use naturally rot resistant wood. Black Locust is probably the most rot resistant species you can find locally. White oak is OK. If you have unlimited funds, Cedar and Redwood are sold. You’ll find locust and white oak at Pennsylvania sawmills. Yes, there are still sawmills around. I have 15 year old white oak beds that are just now breaking down. I expect the locust beds to be heirlooms.

Warped bed Board

The bed length is up to you but the longer board the more expensive they get. You can butt ends of individual beds together, as needed, if you have a big garden and want lots of gardening capacity. Bed width… you want to be able to reach across the bed from either side. Three feet wide is good. Wider is a stretch. Literally. If you don’t mnd working from both sides of a bed make them five feet wide. Board width…a full one inch board width will serve you well.

Locust is like concrete and must be pre-drilled in order to fasten end together. Screws are better than nails. Exterior grade screws are best. Plan to assemble you beds immediately after purchasing the boards at a sawmill, unless the boards have been properly dried, otherwise warping will make this impossible later.

How deep should the bed boards be? Six to eight inches is enough. More is a better but the boards will get expensive. Want deeper beds? Make them the identical dimensions and stack them on top of each other.

Hoops and Plastic make a Mini Greenhouse out of a Raised Bed

It is hard to believe that raising your garden surface less than a foot would yield huge benefits…. But it does. You’ll find gardening gets easier and your efforts are more productive. Your fingers are all you need to plant and weed. You will probably find yourself making low covered tunnels to extend the growing season and seeding crops like lettuce in solid beds instead of rows. You’ll make a cold frame instantly by covering a raised bed with a discarded window. You’ll be gardening earlier and later in the season… harvesting lettuce for Thanksgiving… or Christmas!

Ready for a new gardening adventure? Make a couple of raised beds.

Disarded window makes a cold frame out of a raised bed!

For a nice publication on the subject, see this from Missouri xtension.

Plan and Plant

2011-12-02T10:16:00.003-05:00

Winterberry holly bent badly in the October snow storm. It recovered.

What to do in the yard and garden in December? While we might putter around with the compost pile, rake up the last leaves or finish clean up from that October snow storm, the list of possible gardening tasks is pretty short. Now is a great time to begin planning for next year’s spring planting…..especially tree and shrub planting.

Japanese Zelkova after the storm... beyond repair

Many of us have been forced to think about tree replacement as a result of the late October Snow storm. Six to eight inches of snow applied to trees full of leaves was devastating. On the other hand…the weaklings were weeded out!

Southeastern Pennsylvania certainly could use more trees. In fact, research done in 2002 showed an alarming loss of tree cover in the metro Philly area. In response, Tree Vitalize was born. This private/public partnership has the goal of establishing one million new trees. Quoting from the Tree Vitalize website... “An additional goal is to train 10,000 volunteers in basic tree biology and tree care to assist their communities in establishing and maintaining new plantings. Ultimately, the goal of TreeVitalize is to establish strong urban forestry partnerships in all 14 Pennsylvania metropolitan areas and to build local capacity for sustaining the urban forest resource.” If I am reading the website correctly 296,952 trees have been planted so far. It is a wonderful program. Check it out at http://www.treevitalize.net/ . The volunteer portion of the program is called Tree Tenders and training is ongoing in many communities. See this for details.

Tree Vitalize and Tree Tenders are great programs for communities that want to establish trees. They are not designed to assist private property owners.

Bucks County Master Gardeners plant bare-root Tree Vitalize trees

Penn State Master Gardeners have planted about 75 Tree Vitalize trees at Neshaminy Manor Center, home of the Penn State Extension office. We’re calling our planting The Almshouse Arboretum and it consists of Tree Vitalize trees, some existing trees, as well as specimens we have added on our own. Most of the trees are labeled so you can do a self-guided tour. Or, contact us to have a Master Gardner give you or your group a personalized tour.

OK. Back to your yard….Maybe you have other reasons to plant trees and shrubs. Still trying to sell that house? Realtors will tell you that well landscape properties have exceptional value. Whatever your motivation, tree planting is a good idea. So where to start….

Penn State has lots of help. Trees for Pennsylvania Landscapes and Shrubs for Pennsylvania Landscapes are two excellent references. They describe great plants and categorize them by size and other characteristics such as flowering habit, fall foliage, etc.
Now is a great time to consider where to locate new landscape plants. Your local garden center/nursery usually has a landscape designer on staff to talk this through with you. Check out the Penn State publication Landscaping Home Grounds for some basic principles of landscape design and you’ll be a step ahead when you begin this conversation.

Finally…the actual planting. You can let the professionals do this or tackle it yourself. Planting and After Care of Community Trees will give you good guidance. Or, for a great, short video on the tree planting process, just watch the video produced by the Penn State Master Gardeners of Berks County at this site.
Alright, you’ve got all winter to read, study, talk and plan for tree and shrub planting this spring. Unique, beautiful, long-lived, wildlife-supporting plants are ready and waiting for new homes. It’s up to you to do your part.

Thousand Cankers Disease threatens Black Walnut.. and some businesses

2011-08-31T16:22:00.002-04:00

A species is at stake. Businesses are at stake. Both may survive but damage has already been done and the future is uncertain.

Black Walnut, Juglans nigra, is an important tree species in the eastern United States. In July of this year, Thousand Cankers Disease (TCD) was detected in Pennsylvania for the first time. We now join two other states east of the Mississippi with confirmed cases of a disease which is deadly to black walnut. A quarantine has been established by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in an effort to slow the spread of the disease. The quarantine prohibits the movement of walnut out of Bucks County, the only county in Pennsylvania where detection has occurred. All firewood and wood chips are also subject to the quarantine since segregation of walnut from these potential infection sources cannot be assured.

Here are some questions and answers about Thousand Cankers Disease

Q. Where did it come from?

A. New Mexico, California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and a few other western states began detecting the disease about ten years ago. In 2010 it was found in Tennessee... in 2011 Virginia and Pennsylvania. It is likely that movement of walnut logs or other walnut wood brought the infestation from the west to the native range of black walnut…. the eastern United States. Both the walnut twig beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis and the fungus Geosmithia morbida which are involved in the disease, are thought to be native to the southwestern United States where they originally infested/infected other Juglans species.

Q. How are black walnut trees affected?

A. A beetle about the size of a sesame seed, called the Walnut Twig Beetle, bores into trees. Actually thousands of beetles infest individual trees. The beetle’s larvae tunnel in the bark and at the same time infect the tree with a fungus which kills the plant tissue. These dead areas are called cankers. Many cankers combine to girdle and kill the stems. The numerous feeding sites and cankers give rise to the name Thousand Cankers Disease. Infested walnut trees exhibit yellowing, wilting and dieback in the crown or upper branches of the tree. Within 10 year of infestation, and three years from the time symptoms develop, the tree dies. The best diagnostic sign will be numerous tiny (2 mm) holes in the bark of branches. Beneath the bark, darkly stained, cankered, wood indicates the activity of the fungus. Most Juglans species are susceptible to TCD but Black Walnut appears to be most severely affected.

Q. Are there treatments to cure affected trees or prevent infestation of healthy trees?

A. Not at this time. The nature and habits of the beetle present a great challenge to those who want to control this pest. For instance, adults are active from March through October and can fly 1-2 miles. Even if beetles are partially controlled, the fungus may still cause damage. Research is underway to better understand both the beetle and the fungus involved in the disease.

Q. Why has quarantine been established?

A. The quarantine is an attempt to slow the spread of the disease and preserve this important tree species, both within Pennsylvania and also in states that are currently uninfested.

Q. What businesses are affected by the quarantine?

A. It is unlawful to move any walnut wood (except kiln dried lumber or finished furniture) out of Bucks County. Since it is impractical to distinguish walnut from other wood in loads of firewood or wood chips, they are subject to the quarantine and may not be moved out of Bucks County. Walnut lumber is also quarantined unless it meets certain requirements including kiln drying.

Q. What is being done about the problem?

A. A task force involving regulatory and research experts is creating an action plan to manage TCD in Pennsylvania. Compliance agreements with those affected by the quarantine are being investigated in an effort to find a way to allow them to continue business activities without presenting a threat to walnut outside of Bucks County.

Q What do I do if I think my walnut trees have TCD?

A. Collect a sample of branches with wilting and dieback symptoms. If they exhibit many tiny holes in them, contact Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture 1-866-253-7189 or Penn State Extension.

Q. How can I learn more about the disease and its symptoms?

A. Call (215-345-3283) for a fact sheet or see this website.

In summary, a new disease of Black Walnut threatens an important tree species. Sadly, we’ve seen situations like this before…. Chestnut Blight, Dutch Elm Disease (DED), Hemlock Woolly Adelgid. Perhaps Dutch Elm Disease is most similar because in both cases a beetle vectors a fungal pathogen. Decades after Dutch Elm Disease was introduced, we still have some elms, but the once loved American Elm has been seriously impacted. Many differences exist between DED and TCD but its probably a good place to start as we contemplate the effect of TCD in Pennsylvania. How the story of Thousand Cankers Disease of Black Walnut will play out remains to be seen.

Hot summer weather means tasty produce

2011-08-08T14:08:00.000-04:00

Sunshine makes sugar. So it should not be a surprise that peaches, melons, sweet corn and other summer produce is near perfection in this hot growing season. Dry conditions are a challenge for all farmers and we certainly could use a few more timely rainfall events. But there is no doubt that the abundant sunshine we have experienced so far this year is making for especially sweet fruits and vegetables.

Most folks know that Bucks County still has a viable farming community. But others are surprise to learn that we produce some of the best peaches and nectarines money can buy. A tree ripened peach beats those that are shipped in any day. Same story with melons. A cantaloupe that fully ripens on the vine simply tastes better than those that are harvested for wholesale shipment because they are allowed to continue to accumulate sugar. Same story for many other crops we enjoy. So, buying fresh, local produce often means better quality for you.

August is the prime time peaches, melons, tomatoes and sweet corn. While some early season varieties are available in July, the main crop comes in August. So these crops are in abundance now. Get them while they are in season locally. Our Fresh form Bucks County Farms directory can lead you to dozens of locations where you’ll find these and other treats.

What’s up next? Grape growers know that hot dry season mean exceptional grape and wine quality. Could 2011 be an exceptional vintage year? Too soon to tell but it’s something to look forward to….. along with pumpkins and apples… fresh from Bucks County Farms.

Kiss Your Ash Goodbye?

2011-06-21T15:39:00.006-04:00

By now many Southeastern Pennsylvania residents have noticed bright purple boxes hanging along roadsides. Tree lovers may have noticed that those gizmos are hung in ash trees. They are traps designed to detect the arrival of the latest invasive tree pest, Emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis.

Emerald ash borer has been moving east from Michigan since 2002, where is it was first detected in the U.S. EAB is native to Eastern Russia and Asia and was probably introduced on wooden pallets or other wooden packing material.
It was found on the western border of Pennsylvania in 2007 and central PA in 2009. For more info about EAB see this Penn State site. States that have lived with the infestation longer, such as Ohio, also have excellent information. For some nice color pictures of the insect and its damage, see this.

I have very little good news about this insect but read on if you are still interested.

Good news… No Emerald Ash Borers have been detected in Southeast PA as of June 21, 2011.
Bad news… Expect a detection any day now.

Good news…Only ash trees will be affected by this insect.
Bad news…. EAB has killed about 40 million ash trees so far. All ash species are susceptible and EAB kills most ash in its path.

Good news… Ash trees make up small percentage (3-4%) of the trees in Pennsylvania.
Bad news… Southeast Pennsylvania has a much larger percentage of ash. Ever since I learned about EAB, I have been impressed with the number of ash in Bucks County. See this to learn what ash looks like. I blogged about this in 2008.

Good news…. Ash can be protected from EAB infestation. Several insecticide options are available. Arborists are prepared to do the work. Do-it-yourself is possible.
Bad news…. Insecticide applications ain’t cheap and will require annual re-treatment with most products. Also, it will be impractical to treat all but the most important ornamental trees. Woodland ash are going to be toast.

Good news…Ash makes excellent firewood.
Bad news… The cost of tree take-downs is significant

Good news… Woodpeckers eat EAB larvae.
Bad news… Not fast enough to prevent tree death.

Good news…Entomologists are working to introduce parasites and predators to control EAB
Bad news.. .This stuff takes a long time and the beast is at the door.

Good news....Land Grant Universities in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and our Own Penn State have posted a tremendous amount of excellent EAB information. See above.
Bad news… none of it will stop expanding range of this destructive insect

Good news…. Many wonderful tree species remain in our woods and landscapes
Bad news… You can kiss you ash goodbye.

Fresh From Bucks County Farms

2011-05-18T14:49:00.004-04:00

Just in time for the start of the 2011 growing season, Fresh From Bucks County Farms, a local listing of 75 places where you can buy local produce is available from Penn State Extension.

This popular guide identifies farmers markets, CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), and roadside markets where hungry consumers will find locally produced fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs, wine, cheese and other agricultural products.

Fresh From Farms is available at all Bucks County libraries and on request from Penn State Extension- Bucks County by calling 215-345-3283. It’s on the web at http://www.buckscounty.org/Visitors/Farms/FarmFresh2011.pdf

Strawberries are a popular, season-starting crop that is abundant locally. Usually beginning in late May, some growers already have early production for sale. Pick-Your Own- PYO is a great way to enjoy a farm experience and harvest berries at a great price. Fresh Form Farms list more than a dozen strawberry growers, most of which offer PYO. Get ‘em while they last… strawberries are only in season until late June.

Community Farmers markets are another great way for consumers to connect with a variety of produce. Doylestown, Ottsville, Lower Makefield, Langhorne, New Hope, Plumsteadville, Wrightstown and Feasterville each has a weekly market. At least one of these markets is open Tuesday through Saturday. Each market has a unique blend of vendors. Find locations and detail in Fresh From Farms.

10 Steps Towards a Better Vegetable Garden

2011-03-28T15:46:00.001-04:00

Step one – Soil test. Yes, this may be getting repetitious for anyone who follows Penn State Extension but getting handle on basics soil fertility is so fundamental that is really needs to be Step One. A Penn State soil test will provide information about soil pH as well as the levels of phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and potassium. These four elements are most likely to be lacking in typical Pennsylvania soils. pH influences the uptake of these nutrients and also influences soil biology. So, don’t guess, soil test. Cost is nine bucks. You can’t beat that. You can download the forms needed at or stop by our office for a pre-addressed “kit’ to submit samples.

Step 2 – Build soil organic matter levels. Organic matter is a soil textural cure-all. Organic matter creates large pore spaces that improves soil aeration. That’s good for root growth. In addition, organic matter increases beneficial biological activity, adds essential nutrients and improves “workability” or tilth of the soil. Manures and compost are the most common ways to add organic matter. Green manure and cover crops, too. Good gardeners never miss a chance to add organic matter and actively seek it. High organic matter levels are probably something all great gardens have in common.

Step 3 – Study the requirements of the crops you grow. Each species that we grow has a unique set of cultural requirements …cold hardiness, heat tolerance, spacing requirements, ideal planting date, optimum harvest time, etc. Seed packets provide the basics. For a more complete story find a good reference such as Vegetable Gardening, a new publication from Penn State.

Step 4 - Study the lives of garden pests. You are not the only one interested in those tomatoes, squash and your first born strawberry. In fact, for many garden pests this is a matter of life and death… shear survival. You will share your production with them. Question is.. how much. Get to know the insects, diseases, weeds and mammals that are sure to take a bite out of your garden. Learn which ones are most likely to take the biggest bite and plan strategies to manage them. In some cases this will be simple. For instance, choosing disease tolerant varieties solves a host of fungal problems. A no-brainer! Cabbage worms… Bt! On the other hand, some pests require so much attention that it may not be worth the battle. Sweet corn worms… I’ll leave that to Farmer Brown to handle. Visit any .edu websites for solid pest management information.

Step 5 - Use insect and disease resistant varieties. We mentioned this in step 4 but it bears repeating. Plant breeders have performed miracles by incorporating natural resistance to key pests in virtually all of the crops we grow. Early blight, late blight, powdery mildew, wilts, rots spots… become minor issues rather than devastating losses for many crops. Take advantage of this free form of pest control!

Step 6 - Mulch, Mulch, Mulch. Both organic and synthetic mulches do wonders for gardens. They conserve moisture, control weeds, moderate soil temperatures, and improve soil quality. Straw, tree leaves, wood chips and many other organic mulches have great uses in the garden. Plastic mulches, in my opinion, are under-used by home gardeners. Heat loving crops such as tomato, eggplant and peppers as well as the vine crops love the heat. Try some. Bio-degradable and paper mulches are also available if that suits you better. Similar results.

Step 7 – Plan and record your garden activities. What was that great bean variety I grew last year? I know I planted 3 kinds of garlic out there, which is which? Are the Japanese beetles going to arrive when we go on vacation? A garden journal or notebook provides useful information and is fun off-season reading.

Step 8 – Try something new each year. How about those floating row covers? Can I really grow onions from seed? Can I plant shallots in the fall? Are figs hardy around here? There is only one sure-fire way to find out. Give it a try. Over time, your experiences become rich garden knowledge.

Step 9 – Start composting. Composting is a simple way to recycle garden and kitchen refuse. Doesn’t need to be elaborate. A simple “heap” of decomposing stuff does the trick. Type the word composting into the search box at www.agsci.psu.edu for more details.

Step 10 – Read and study a wide range of garden folklore and science-based reports. We garden for pleasure so it’s a great way to explore the unknown, experiment and learn. Garden magazines, blogs and associations of specialists are easy to find. Did you know there was Pennsylvania Nut Growers Association? A garlic newsletter? Several huge tomato tasting events every year within easy driving distance? Subscribe, visit and learn.

Grow Your Own

2011-01-20T11:45:00.003-05:00

It seems that interest in growing more of your own food continues to gain steam. It’s hard to say what is fueling this phenomenon. Concerns about food quality? Trying to save a buck or two? Fretting over the environment? I don’t know. There must be a survey out there somewhere that sheds light on this.

For many years, gardening has been identified as America’s leading hobby. Add to this the growing interest in food and you’ve got something special. Farmers markets are springing up everywhere. Locally grown food is automatically gourmet. Suddenly, every other person you meet wants to keep honey bees…. my introduction to beekeeping course is sold out.

The good news is that Penn State Extension is ready, willing and able to help. We’ve been teaching people how to grow food for about 100 years. Publications are a good example of this. This fall, a brand new guide to vegetable gardening, authored by Elsa Sanchez, Associate Professor of Horticulture and her co-horts at Penn State was published. Fifty eight pages of research-based, (but user-friendly) information on the vegetable crops we love. It is cleverly titled Vegetable Gardening. Hey, if you want the sizzle rather than the steak your local Land Grant University is not the place to go… but we do have the goods.

An equally good publication for fruit growers, Fruit Production for the Home Gardner is 186 pages of powerful information on strawberry, raspberry, blueberry and other fruit culture.
These two are good examples but just the tip of the iceberg. Go to the College of Ag Sciences web site and dig for more. We can teach you how to grow just about anything. Livestock, too.

Some folks learn better with a bit classroom instruction. In Bucks County, we’ve been conducting a short course called Living on A Few Acres for about 25 years. Now it is being offered throughout southeastern Pennsylvania. In this course you not only learn how to pick a ripe watermelon, you’ll find out how to tell if that hen is laying eggs, too! Call us at 215-345-3283 for registration information on the Bucks County course or this site in other counties.

Some folks have an urge to go to the next level. Start farming. That’s a big step up from gardening. But it happens all of the time. Penn State recognized this need and is now engaged in a major effort to help those who want to grow food for profit. You can check out the extensive list of course offerings and more at the Start Farming website.

Got kids? Are they between the ages of 8 and 18? If so, they can get a real fine, agricultural, hands-on experience through our 4-H youth program. Sheep, chickens, beef, turkeys, tomatoes, you name it. Ask for Bob Brown when you call our office. Hit this site for a directory of counties in Pennsylvania and their local program. I’m a bit biased, I’ll admit, but observing the impact 4-H has on kids for more than 30 years has convinced me that it is one of the best youth programs available... and about the only one that will get your kid involved in agriculture. Learn by doing… what a concept!

Want to grow your own… just a little or enough to live on? Penn State Extension is a great place to get started.

Cold Storage...in your garden

2011-01-05T17:56:00.010-05:00

There’s nothing like eating stuff from your own garden. This pleasure is usually confined to the growing season. Juicy tomatoes, salad ingredients that were alive minutes before you ate them, ripe melons…

But some crops maintain good quality after harvest... if given proper storage conditions. Cold and moist is usually what is required . Root crops may be the best example of garden produce with excellent storage life …if they are kept cold and moist. Beets, carrots and parsnips, are good candidates. The cabbage family works well this way, too. The text book says 32 degrees F and 95-100 percent humidity is ideal. Cold but not frozen. Very high humidity.

This can be tricky to achieve in most homes, cellars and garages. The simplest way to hold these crops is to plant them so they mature at the end of the growing season and then just mulch them heavily, in place, with something like straw. In our mild winters the soil does not freeze too deeply, and if given some protection, you can continue the harvest thru winter. But you’ve got to literally dig them up.

While visiting my pal Graham in Rhode Island this December, I see that he has taken the next step in “in-ground’ storage. He simply dug holes to accommodate two five-gallon pails. The pail tops are about level with the surrounding ground. Drilled some holes in the bottom of the buckets to allow any surface water to exit. He filled the pails with carrots and beets after the fall harvest in late October, lidded the pails and covered them with a bale of straw. You can see the results.

You’ll have to trust me that the carrots were very tasty. Roasted. With some nice salmon. And a crisp white wine. Didn’t get around to the beets but they were solid as a rock. Sure, some sprouting had occurred but it did not seem to have influenced quality.
Something to think about as you plan for next year’s garden. The virtues of planning for a fall harvest can be extended into the shortest days of winter.

The picture at the top shows rutabaga or swedes, as my friend Graham calls them. Very tasty.

For a list of storage conditions and some more ideas about vegetable storage, see this from Cornell University.

"When the frost is on the pumpkin..."

2010-11-05T11:34:00.004-04:00

The frost is on the pumpkin! Twenty- four degrees was the reading on my thermometer on two consecutive mornings this week. Even hit twenty-eight in Doylestown. So the frost is on the pumpkin. This “killing frost” in the mid-twenties takes out all of the tender annuals… weeds and crops. Cold hardy plants carry on.

The picture shown here is a broccoli leaf and the heads that are part of this plant are still in good shape. In fact, one reason to plant fall maturing crops in the cabbage family (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts) is that they hold so well in the cool/cold temperatures of fall. Spring planted crops of the same species are forced to mature in the heat of late spring and early summer. They often go from “prime condition” to “over-the-hill” in a matter of days, especially when temperatures spike into the high eighties. I’d rather let Mother Nature hold them for me, naturally.

Forgot to plant you fall crops? Perhaps our local farmers can come to the rescue. As I visit local vegetable farms I see beautiful fields of fall vegetables. And, I know that bushels of winter squash are stored away from the freezing temperatures, just waiting for you to make pumpkin pies, baked squash and other fall specialties. I even know a local sweet potato grower who has several varieties of this nutritious root.

Turnips, rutabagas and parsnips are not everyone’s cup of tea but if you have not tried the farm-fresh version of these root vegetables recently consider giving them a try. Maybe next year they will be part of your fall garden, too.

Want more information on the culture of fall vegetable crops? Penn State’s brand new Vegetable Gardening publication is a great place to start.

PS For a wonderful reading of James Whitcob Rileys' poem, see this.

Jack Frost, Garlic and Cover Crops.

2010-10-26T11:35:00.004-04:00

Rumors of frost were heard in northern Bucks County last Saturday (Oct 23) but for most of Southeastern PA the growing season continues uninterrupted. In fact, even where light frost occurred, as in my backyard, I still see many cold sensitive plants surviving. My fancy new minimum/maximum thermometer at the Extension office in Doylestown says 35 degrees F is as low as it’s been here.

So, it is clear we have not had that killing freeze that signals a definite end to many aspects of gardening. But official, long-term records tell us that we are on borrowed time… the median (equal number of occurrences on both sides of the question) frost date in Bucks County is October 6.

Sure enough the tomatoes and peppers that are still hanging on out there look pretty rough. The accumulation of summer diseases combined with short days and very cool nights makes most of us yank them out of the garden. In fact, smart gardeners ruthlessly pulled these plants a month ago and planted lettuce, spinach, broccoli rabe and other late season crops. Or maybe you even sacrificed the late season tomatoes altogether in return for a fall crop of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower by transplanting these “cole” crops in late August or early September.

Even if you waited until now, there are a couple final crops you might consider. Cover crops and garlic.

Cover crops are plants that we establish to protect soil from compaction, to soak up leftover nutrients and to build soil organic matter. The most common fall cover crop in our area is rye. Not ryegrass but cereal rye, sometimes called winter rye. It germinates quickly in the warm, fall soil and makes a vigorous overwintering cover that resurges in the spring. In fact, you have to prepare to manage this cover crop or it will become a beast that is hard to incorporate. Plan to spade it under in April before it begins to bolt and go to seed. You’ll be rewarded with a great shot of soil organic matter, nutrition and biological activity. Rye is not the easiest seed to find but old-time feed stores will a have it. Seed it at about 3 to 4 lbs per 1000 square feet into well-worked soil. It is a large seed so try to get it about an inch deep.

Last but not least is garlic… the last edible crop we plant in the garden. Our goal is to have the garlic cloves root but not make too much top growth before winter sets in. This allows for a petty wide planting window. I shoot for Columbus Day in mid-October but planting until the end of October, or even a little later is not a problem. Get “seed” at a local farmers market selling locally grown stuff or order a variety grown in the Northeast US for best results. See this link for more details, page 27.

Jack Frost is coming but the gardening season continues.

Montauk Daisies, Nippon Daisy… Nipponanthemum nipponicum

2010-10-10T12:18:00.006-04:00

Mother Nature saved some of her best work for the end of the growing season with the Nippon Daisy. Also commonly called the Montauk Daisy (because it is commonly found on eastern Long Island), its Latin name, Nipponanthemum nipponicum, makes it pretty clear that this plant is native to Japan (Nippon). Plant lovers may also know it by its former Latin binomial, Chrysanthemum nipponicum. By its current classification, it is the only member of its genus, one of 477 genera in the Aster Family. So much for the nomenclature.

Almost precisely one year ago, I was on a busman’s holiday in Rhode Island, looking over the Kathleen Mallon Memorial Demonstration Gardens on the campus of the University of Rhode Island. They are created and maintained by Master Gardeners in that state and named for an Extension Educator who was instrumental in launching the Master Gardener program there. I was knocked out by the brilliant white show of flowers from Nippon Daisy. My plant pal, Mary Jane, quickly identified it and told me that they were as common as clams in Rhode Island. Then I started noticing them everywhere in Costal New England.

Back home, the Nippon Daisy faded from memory until I was in a very good local garden center this summer and asked if they had ever heard of them. I don’t see them used much in SE PA. The plantsman at the garden center agreed but said he was beginning to get inquiries about it. Sure enough he had a few containerized plants and they are now lighting up my fall landscape.

Nippon Daisy is hardy in zones 6-9 and is a rugged plant. It tolerates dry sites, does best in full sun and makes its floral display late in the growing season. It will grow about three feet tall and wide and requires some simple/easy pruning for best performance. They can become “leggy”, that is, produces naked stems but with a bit of pruning the plant can be kept a bit more compact. Plan to cut them close to the ground each spring. Most landscape design advice is to plan for something that grows a bit lower in front of Nippon Daisy to hide its bare legs as the season progresses. Some references say deer don’t care much for it and it has stood up to a modest test in my landscape. The floral display beings in late summer and lasts late into the fall. White is the word. Maybe it is the contrast of white with the reds and golds of our fall foliage that makes it so attractive. Makes a good cut flower, too.

Reading about this plant, I learned that the famous plant breeder and legendary, pioneering geneticist, Luther Burbank hybridized this species with other closely related species to create Shasta Daisy and other popular cultivars which we still enjoy. Apparently, it was the brilliant white that made him choose Nippon Daisy for his work.

It seems that my revelation about Nippon Daisy would cause a chuckle among coastal gardeners but until I see more of them in Pennsylvania landscapes, I will continue to talk up this great plant.

It’s not too late to search for this fantastic daisy in local garden centers. Call it Montauk, Nippon or Nipponanthemum nipponicum, this plant is worth a look if you are in the market for an outstanding fall bloomer for a hot, dry site.

New Backyard Vegetable Publication from Penn State

2010-08-13T10:56:00.004-04:00

Who said there is nothing new under the sun? Penn State just published a new, 58 page guide to backyard vegetable production titled Vegetable Gardening… Recommendations for Home Gardeners in Pennsylvania. It contains sections on mulches, container growing, irrigation and other cultural practices. Following this, there is a separate discussion of key plant groups: Brassicas (cabbages), root crops, bulb crops, leafy vegetables, tomato/eggplant and others.

There is information on seed starting, planting dates, spacing, pest management and harvesting…. everything beginning gardeners need to begin a successful garden. Seasoned gardeners are sure to pick up a few new ideas as well.

Dates described in the guide refer to central Pennsylvania. Those of us in the southern part of the state can adjust suggested dates about 10 days at both ends of the growing season. So, the gardening season is not over! Lettuces, turnips, radish are just a few of the tasty crops we can seed or transplant this month. With season extending rows covers we’ll be gardening until Thanksgiving.

Vegetable Gardening… Recommendations for Home Gardeners in Pennsylvania distills the knowledge of more than dozen Penn State experts and was organized by associate professor of Horticulture, Elsa Sanchez. You can order a copy or simply read it on line by going to this site.

Summer Color with Crapemyrtles

2010-08-11T11:25:00.010-04:00

Most of the flowering trees and large shrubs we admire in the landscape are spring bloomers. Think dogwood, cherry, magnolia….crabapple, pear, serviceberry….redbud, lilac and viburnum.

So, stunning summer flowering trees are a treat for the eyes. One of the most conspicuous small trees/large shrubs that I see at this time of year is Crapemyrtle, Lagerstroemia. Common flower colors are shades of pink and red but white cultivars exist. In addition to the showy flowers, Crapemyrtle bark is very attractive…shades of cinnamon brown and gray that exfoliates with age. One respected plantsman says “If Crapemyrtle never produced flowers or leaves, it would not be a bad thing.” That’s high praise for bark characteristics.

One reason Crapemyrtle is somewhat unusual in Pennsylvania landscapes is its hardiness. Unless you are in zone 6 or 7 it won’t survive. Even in zone 6, expect dieback to the ground in severe winters. What has helped make Crapemyrtle more popular is a breeding program from the National Arboretum which added both winter hardiness and disease tolerance from Lagerstroemia fauriei to Lagerstroemia indica, resulting in about 20 wonderful hybrids. These cultivars, developed by Dr. Donald Egolf, all have Native American tribal names, so they are easy to spot. Tuscarora, Natchez, Hopi, Sioux, etc. A list of National Arboretum selections and a thorough description will guide you to good decisions.

Aside from being marginally hardy for parts of Pennsylvania, the plant is tough as nails. Yea, Japanese beetles like to chew on them and reference books describe other pests… but nothing life threatening. Crapemyrtles thrives in hot spots and tolerate poor soil. Full sun exposure is best.

So, if you have a hot spot in the landscape that can accommodate a multi-stemmed tree/shrub which will mature between 10 and 20 feet, and you would like a splash of bright color in the landscape in mid-summer, think Crapemyrtles. Start with the National Arboretum selections and beware of hardiness requirements. I counted more than 60 cultivars in my reference books, not all of them are appropriate for Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Growing Great Garlic

2010-07-07T11:49:00.008-04:00

I won’t fake modesty here. I grew some great garlic. You can, too. It’s easy.

The garlic heads pictured here were harvested over the July 4th weekend… just a bit earlier than normal in this hot growing season.

I grow hard neck garlic, Allium sativum var. ophioscorodon, also known as ophio garlic, serpent garlic, top setting garlic, and echte Rokkenbolle or Schlangenknoblauch (to my German friends).

Hard necks produce a reproductive structure called a “scape”, a firm stalk ending in a swollen capsule which contains bulbils, not flowers. The scapes are quite tasty themselves, if harvested when they snap easily from the plant in mid spring.

Hard necks are different from the soft neck garlic you get in the grocery store. Hard necks have a shorter shelf life, fewer (but larger cloves) and for many people, have better, bolder flavor. As the name indicates, soft necks have no hard stem. They braid nicely. Most of what you see in the grocery store are softnecks, grown in China.

Oh, it gets even more complicated than this with different types of both hard neck and soft necks. And the names given to local selections of each type muddies the water even further. Recently, USDA researchers have concluded that there are actually many fewer garlic varieties than the common names would imply. Local adaptations and response to environment account for the perceived differences. For a great read on garlic, consider the text, Growing Great Garlic by Ron Engeland. It sorts out a lot of the terminology, history and origins of this unique food and provides excellent advice on growing all types of garlic. Penn State’s Growing Bulb Crops publication also has enough info to get you started.

Back to the basics. So, if harvest time is about the 4th of July, when is planting time? Columbus Day…more or less. That’s a good general guide for planting garlic in Pennsylvania. You simply stick a clove, (root end down) an inch or two deep into well prepared, rich garden ground, spaced about every 7 inches. It often makes sense to make a bed and plant three rows together, about 10 inches away from adjacent rows. Cloves will root well and make a few leaves before the soil freezes up. Then mulch with straw or leaves and wait for them poke thru in the spring. Keep the planting weed free. A shot of rich compost or fertilizer in early spring is a good idea.

That’s about it. Garlic has few pest problems besides weeds. A few hand weedings, as the mulch deteriorates, is necessary. When to harvest is an important consideration. Too early and clove size and maturity is reduced. Too late and cloves separate within the head and quality and shelf live diminish. I have followed Engeland’s advice and harvest my Ophios when 40 % of the lower leaves have died, leaving about 6 green leaves at the top of the plant at the time of harvest. Your goal it to have well segmented cloves that have not begun to separate within the head. This is usually about mid-July for the varieties I grow.

Post harvest care is important. I move my harvested garlic immediately to a shaded, well ventilated area to “cure”. Although many folks seem inclined to let it lay out in the hot sun, this is not the best approach. Since most of it is consumed by Christmas, no special storage is required. Most references say to store garlic at 55-65 degrees F and 50 % humidity. So a cool cellar, or similar space, will work very well.

Note that you’ll likely be saving some of you own crop as “seed”. Not literally. You’ll save some heads that will be broken into separate cloves for planting in October. So if you happen to harvest some over mature heads, they make good planting stock. Or, just eat them first.

Of course you have to get started somehow. Where do you get planting stock? Your best bet may be a local farmers market that is selling their own, farm grown garlic. This will obviously be well adapted to your area. If this doesn’t work, the internet is full of sellers in the Northeast US. Don’t plant store bought garlic. It is unlikely to be well adapted to our growing conditions.
I still have a lot to learn about garlic. I’d like to try some soft necks. Add a few more hard necks. But the important things I have learned are that hard neck garlic is easy to grow, it’s better tasting than store bought and it keeps well until Christmas (and beyond). Give it a try this fall.

Getting Dry... Good, Bad and Ugly

2010-07-02T11:54:00.007-04:00

OK getting dry might be an understatement. It is DRY in Bucks County, PA. When I see roadside weeds wilting, it’s dry. And today’s newspaper says, “Hot and dry with no rain in sight”. I think that means no rain in the forecast. Sure enough, the 7 day forecast is bone dry.

Let’s start with the good aspects of dry. My farm friends (who have irrigation) tell me that they will take a dry year over a wet one anytime. It is possible to add water but impossible to take it away. Heat and sunshine combined with timely irrigation equals wonderful tomatoes, peaches and other produce. Sure they have the chore of moving pipes and running pumps but they have control of the water. Same thing goes for home gardens.

And that late blight problem we are watching… it's gonna have trouble getting cranked up in these conditions. Notice how the sycamores have leafed out again after the ravages of early season leaf diseases. Thank the dry heat.

The bad…I think most folks underestimate the damage water stress causes to plants. Especially woody plants. It’s pretty obvious when you neglect to water the petunias or tomatoes. They wilt and probably recover when watered; if not, they die and you move on. In any event, they are annuals so you get another chance at minimal expense. With woody plants, the effects of drought are often harder to see and the effects may take awhile to manifest themselves. Often times it is borers, or even disease, that finish off these drought stressed plants. It may take years.

Just for fun, I observe lots of new landscape plantings. New housing developments, commercial sites, even the grounds of our Extension office. Frequently (if not usually) the newly established trees and shrubs are subject to severe drought stress in the first 12 months of planting. When they can least tolerate it. It is good to recall that these plants arrive to the site with a severely diminished root system. A lot of it was left behind in the nursery when the plant was dug. Even containerized plants have an abnormally restricted root system. Believe it or not, sometimes the plants that are established on these job sites arrive already drought stressed. Dormant plants that don’t “ leaf out” normally are suspect in my eyes.

OK. What does this mean? Right now, trees and shrubs that were planted within the last 12 months need water. If you wait until leaves wilt and fall off you have waited too long. Anticipate the watering needs of these plants and give them a good soaking before they wilt. Check back in a week and repeat if necessary. A good soaking is hard to quantify. How about this… 5 – 10 gallons per tree, applied at the base of the plant, slowly so that it soaks into the ground. Repeat weekly as needed. This requires a hose and some time. A watering can won’t cut it. Mother Nature will eventually come to our aid but until them, make a date with your trees and shrubs weekly. That green thing shown above is a "gator"; an irrigator bag. A handy device that allows the bag to drip water into the soil at a nice, slow rate, but you can fill it quickly.

The ugly…of course, complete neglect in a drought results in dead plants. Maybe not dead now but drought stress can show up as “winter injury’, borer damage or even disease in the long run. Going on vacation? How about a good soaking before you head off. The trees, not you.

Finally, although it is hard to imagine in a drought, it is possible to have too much soil moisture. You can over water. Automatic irrigation systems (improperly manage) kill plants.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if it rained an inch a week, every week, preferably between midnight and dawn. There are places in the world where temperatures and rainfall regular and predictable, within the growing season. Pennsylvania isn't one of them.

Late Blight Rears Its Ugly Head Again

2010-06-14T15:39:00.006-04:00

Late blight, the disease that wrecked many gardeners’ dreams of a fresh tomato sandwich last year, has been found, wide-spread, in western Pennsylvania. Many horticulturists, me included, were optimistic that we would be spared in 2010 but that hope now appears to be dashed. At this time, late blight has only been confirmed in three western PA counties but all Pennsylvania tomato and potato growers need to be vigilant. For a good discussion of the disease including images, see this site; or this site
To recap…. Late blight is a devastating fungus-like disease of both tomato and potato. Symptoms include rapid blighting of foliage and fruit. Tomato stems exhibit chocolate brown lesions. Leaves have blotchy brown spots and may produce fuzzy, whitish masses on the underside of leaves, especially in the morning when dew is present. Note that this is very different from early blight which results in yellow-brown lesions on lower leaves, containing concentric rings of dead tissue.

What’s a gardener to do? First, be vigilant. Inspect tomatoes and potatoes daily for late blight symptoms. Penn State will be tracking the disease in an attempt to alert commercial growers about the threat of late blight in their vicinity. It’s one thing to miss out on a tomato sandwich…quite another thing to lose a big chunk of your income. Farmers have a lot at stake with a crop of tomatoes or potatoes. Contact your extension office if you think you see late blight. Feel free to bring samples to the office for confirmation of the disease.

How about protecting those plants? Conventional gardeners and farmers can use products containing chlorothalonil, for starters. New foliage needs to be protected as it grows. Organic gardeners have copper fungicides, which will not provide the same level of protection as chlorothalonil but are better than nothing. If you plan to let Mother Nature take its course, and do nothing, at least be prepared to destroy infected plants at the first sign of disease… your neighbors will thank you. Best bet in small gardens is to bag the plants in plastic and cook them in the sun.

Any chance we’ll escape late blight in eastern PA? I was an optimist in the winter because it is known that the organism does not survive without living tissue in the North and Old Man Winter took care of that (except for potato cull piles) . But now that the cat is out of the bag…. I think we’re in for another year of greasy, black fruit in the tomato patch.

Dang… I was feeling good; tying up plants in the rain yesterday. Now I wonder if those raindrops were accompanied by late blight spores. Current conditions are ideal for late blight infection.

Beautiful Gardens... Near and Far

2010-05-17T16:12:00.009-04:00

In the past month, I have visited two of the best public gardens in the world….one in our backyard, Longwood… the other across the Atlantic, Keukenhof. Lucky me.

I was in the Netherlands visiting family in early May and it was tulip time at Keukenhof. Perfect timing. Keukenhof is a 76 acre garden that features spring flowering bulbs. Supported by the bulb industry, their website says it is the most photographed place in the world. I can believe it. Every step through the garden compels you to snap another picture. With all due respect to Longwood, it is the best public garden I have ever seen. There are more than 7 million hand planted bulbs on display. Four million tulips, not to mention the daffodils and grape hyacinth… 20, 000 lilies.

Wow. If you ever find yourself in Europe in April, don’t miss it.

Back at work… Penn State President Graham Spanier conducts a very nice program for new and newly tenured faculty at Penn State called the Roads Scholars Tour. About 50 faculty witness Penn State’s presence and impact across Pennsylvania. They visit Commonwealth Campuses (there are 19 of them across the state), Hershey Medical School and other places where Penn State has had an impact. This brings us to Longwood Gardens. There are lots of Penn State graduates on the staff here and I learned about many cooperative research ventures involving Penn State and Longwood. My pal Dr. Casey Sclar, Plant Health Care Division Leader at Longwood led the Roads Scholars and President Spanier on a great tour of this world class garden. Casey said Longwood was about to present the largest lily collection in the world. I guess there will be more than the 20,000 at Keukenhof. Yikes!

Unlike Keukenhof, Longwood is open 365 days a year. What a challenge for the horticulturists there. If you have not visited lately, put it on your “to do” list.

Tomato Time

2010-05-05T14:01:00.005-04:00

Ask most vegetable gardeners what single thing they would not live without in their garden and it is probably the tomato. Makes sense, tomatoes are easy to grow and reliably produce lots of fruit; they are tasty, good for you and bear from July till frost. There is a huge selection of varieties to choose from so tomato growers don’t get bored. And it is just plain satisfying to pick a big, fat, ripe tomato and fix yourself that first sandwich or salad.

Growing tomatoes is so easy I hesitate to offer advice but here goes. Even veteran tomato growers got a surprise last year with late blight and I’ll offer a few thought s on this disease. Here’s a link to Penn State’s tomato growing guide. See page 55. It contains lots of good detail on tomato culture…and its relative, the eggplant.

Grow your own transplants or rely on the local greenhouse? That is a big question. Certainly growing your own plants gives you more control over what varieties you’ll enjoy. But many of us just don’t have the time, growing conditions or skill to produce a good transplant. I find that small, local greenhouses offer the best chance at getting an excellent quality plant as well as decent variety selection. Try your local farm market, too. Sometimes farmers start more transplants than they need and sell the rest.

Tomatoes are heat loving plants. They will not tolerate a frost so we wait until mid-May in Bucks County to plant them out, unless you have some device that will protect them or are willing to gamble that Mother Nature is looking out for you. By Mother’s Day, we are almost always past danger of a hard freeze, so that’s a good tomato planting guideline. Makes sense to look at that 10 day outlook and adjust as necessary. You can plant out earlier using low tunnels, wall-of-water, row covers and other heat retention devices if you are the kind of person who wants that first tomato on the block.

Varieties… the list is endless. Entire websites are devoted to tomato seeds and varieties. Here are a few suggestions based on Penn State evaluations, personal experience and high praise from knowledgeable tomato people.
Brandyboy… an improved Brandywine type will give you excellent size and flavor without the downsides of straight Brandywine that heirloom folks praise. Fabulous…is just that, a fabulous, tasty slicer that will not disappoint you. Celebrity is an early fruiting, smaller but reliably good slicer. Mortgage Lifter is a good choice if you are in the heirloom market; and how can we overlook a variety called Bucks County from Burpee.

Plant breeders have been taking the best qualities of heirloom types and combining them with traits that improve yield uniformity and disease resistance. I’m not talking about those hard, red cardboard tasting things you find in the mega-mart. Plant a Brandywine and a Brandyboy side by side and judge for yourself. Space is limited so I’ll leave it to you to explore the plum, cherry, grape Roma and other small types but I will drop a name…Mountain Magic is reported to be a superb new “salad” size tomato that will be available in limited quality this year. In addition to yield and flavor it is resistant to late blight.

Ah late blight… the tomato/potato disease that took a lot of the fun out of last year’s garden. You may recall tomatoes turning a greasy, black color and croaking about mid July. For a more detailed discussion of the disease, check out previous blog entries.

Bottom line… no reason to expect late blight to be the scourge it was in 2009 but keep your eyes open and let us know if you see it. Gardening-wise, there are no special gardening practices that you can employ to prevent late blight. No need to sterilize soil, tools tec. Rotating planting location is always a good practice but will have no effect on late blight.

More likely, our old nemesis, early blight and Septoria leaf blight, will be infecting plants. Neither are the devastating fruit rotter and plant killer that late blight is but they overwinter her very well. Stake or cage plants to encourage quick drying and you’ll see less of these diseases. Inspect plants when you purchase and bypass those with spotted or yellowing leaves.

A final thought… consider planting through black plastic mulch. It is amazing what it does for soil heat and water retention, weed control and overall soil physical prosperities.

Pretty Spring Flowers

2010-04-22T11:36:00.007-04:00

What a fantastic floral display Mother Nature puts on in Spring! And to think that some people would call her brush strokes weeds.

Right now, yellow rocket Barbarea vulgaris, is in full bloom. This plant is classified as a winter annual. This class of weeds germinates in the fall, survive the winter in a vegetative state and then bloom and set seed in the spring… fading away as the days lengthen and the heat of summer approaches. They produce a nice crop of seeds which will lay dormant until fall when the whole annual cycle begins again. Isn't Nature cool?

Of course this plant can be a weed if it is growing in competition with garden or crop plants. In fact there is a good chance that your garden is full of winter annual weeds right now. Many of the Brassica family (also called crucifers or mustards) are winter annuals. The family includes Virginia pepperweed, Wild mustard, Shepherd’s-purse, Bittercress, and Field pennycress. They are closely related to cultivated plants such as broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts.

Other winter annuals include Common chickweed, Purple deadnettle and Henbit. Purple deadnettle, shown here, is lovely but I am more partial to Henbit's scalloped leaf margins and daintier flowers.

In addition to being pretty, many winter annuals provide forage for bees. They cover the soil and prevent soil erosion. Some call them the poor man’s cover crop.

So enjoy the pretty spring flowers produced by winter annuals. They won’t be here long. Instead, the flip side of annual weed life cycles is beginning. The summer annuals...crabgrass, pigweed, foxtails and ragweed are just getting started. It’s a little harder for me to warm up to these plants. And they are more likely to occupy your time in the garden than the winter annuals.

Want a good weed/wild flower book? Weeds of the Northeast is a great picture book containing more than 280 species common to the northeast U.S. It was written by the excellent folks at Cornell University, a sister “land grant institution” to Penn State.

The National Pastime… Baseball and Lawns

2010-03-26T11:54:00.006-04:00

Your lovely lawn and baseball…. what’s the connection? I am not talking about the days you spent as a kid tossing the ball around. Nope, I am talking about crabgrass and grubs and dandelions.

Marketing experts have probably figured something out…. Guys take care of the lawn and guys listen to baseball on the radio. So it is not surprising to hear lawn care advice when these two come together. For the past three weeks I have been advised to apply crabgrass control or meet certain disaster from the claws of crabgrass. I guess I can’t blame the marketers… their crabgrass control timing is in the ballpark. A bit early, but with crabgrass control it is better to be early than late. Factor in the procrastination factor and other manly distractions and I understand the marketing strategy.

Crabgrass is an annual grass that germinates when soil warms to a critical temperature. The date varies from year to year but in Southeastern PA but is reliably after the team comes north for opening day. Sometimes weeks after. But to be on the safe side, and since most of the preemerge products will not control crabgrass after it has emerged and all of the products require Mother Nature to water them in... getting the job done before you get a look a the fifth starting pitcher is a good idea. If crabgrass applications begin to conflict with the federal tax deadline you are skating on thin ice.

Before we tackle the crabgrass herbicide options though, let’s step back and ask a question. Got crabgrass? If you have not observed crabgrass in your lawn for the last several years and your lawn is reasonably dense, shift you attention to the bull pen problems or the backup catcher instead. Not every lawn needs preemerge crabgrass control every year. Putting your efforts into growing dense turf and raising the mowing height can eliminate the potential crabgrass problem. Get a Penn State soil test and follow the recommendations. Kick the deck up a notch. Lime, fertilizer and proper mowing height are the basis of lawn weed management.

OK, assuming you require crabgrass control, what are your options? This publication describes pre-emergence herbicides that will do the job. There are many options including one (dithiopyr) for major league procrastinators! You can apply this one before or after crabgrass germination and still get excellent control. Most of these products are sold as an additive to fertilizer. Or you can hire a lawn care company to do the job for you.

Next up… grub control. Another manly endeavor brought to you by salesmen who know their audience. I’ll try to talk you out of that another time.

Berries in Winter !!!

2010-02-26T15:46:00.008-05:00

Winterberry … what a great name for this deciduous holly that is in all its glory after a winter snow storm. Its official common name is Common Winterberry. Its Latin name is Ilex verticillata and plant people will recognize that Ilex is the same genus as the other hollies, most of which, are evergreen.

Winterberry holly drops its leaves in the fall. And that is what makes it such a show-off in the dormant season. Add a background of drifted, white snow and you have a spectacular landscape plant. It’s not surprising that cultivar names include Stoplight, Wildfire, Red Sprite and Sparkleberry. Depending on the cultivar, they will grow to a height of 5 to 12 feet.

This plant has several qualities that make it a good choice for Pennsylvania landscapes. It has very few pest problems….I’ve never seen a splotch or a notch from disease or insect damage. It thrives in wet sites, which broadens its potential as a landscape plant. And then there is the fruit. Many plants produce interesting fruit but the combination of the brilliant, red color and the lack of competition or camouflage makes Winterberry holly fruit really special. And it hangs in there until late winter, long after most fruit has dropped or been eaten by birds.

Like the other hollies, winterberry has male and female plants. Bet you never thought of that. Most plants are hermaphrodites… male and female parts on the same plant or even in the same flower. Hollies are like us…separate sexes. This means that you will need to plant a male holly along with the showy, fruit-bearing females so that pollination, and fruit set occurs. Your nursery or garden center will help you select the right male. You can tuck him nearby and Mother Nature and the bees will do the rest.

There are many cultivars of Winterberry holly to choose from. Longwood Gardens and the Scott Arboretum have excellent collections. There are even yellow fruiting forms. Some are hybrids of Ilex verticillata and Ilex serrata, Japanese Winterberry.

Longwood Gardens researchers recently evaluated winterberry holly cultivars. Check out the results in a two part (part 1) (part 2)wrtite-up in American Nurseryman Magazine The National Arboretum has great info, too.

Late Blight - 2010

2010-02-08T15:15:00.008-05:00

Ok. First, the take home message…. Tomatoes growers should not expect the 2009 epidemic of Late Blight to return in 2010. And… the disease organism that causes late blight has not survived in soil, pots, stakes or other non-living tissue in Pennsylvania. So, chill out on all of those elaborate plans to sanitize the garden. If Late Blight interests you, read on. If you grew potatoes last year, and have any left over, be sure to read to the end of this blog because you could cause a problem.

Last week I spent an entire day, in one room….learning about tomato production at the Mid-Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Growers Conference in Hershey, PA. I was in charge of making sure the projector worked and the lighting was conducive to learning, otherwise I would have slipped out to catch that session on horseradish, among others, down the hall.

A lot of time in the tomato marathon was devoted to late blight, the disease that caused widespread destruction of tomatoes in the Northeast US last summer. Two things were responsible for that epidemic. One… infected transplants were sold throughout the Northeast thru the “Big Box" stores. The stores were supplied by a large greenhouse business that had late blight (a disease caused by a fungus-like organism) in their production system. I am sure that neither the stores nor the greenhouse business intended to create such an epidemic. But the end result was distribution of infected plants over the Northeast... a devilishly effective Step One: spread a very contagious organism over a wide geographic area. Late Blight spreads by spores which can blow 30-40 miles in moist air. It can infect tomato and potato as well as some weeds in the tomato family (and petunia, I learned).

Thanks to an eagle-eyed plant pathologist from Cornell, the problem was diagnosed every early. He blew a whistle and everyone paid attention, otherwise, it could have been worse. He said it may have been the most constructive thing he has done in his long career.

Step Two was Mother Nature. She picked 2009 to provide excess moisture and cooler than normal temperatures from June until September. Perfect for the Late Blight organism. Hey, whose side are you on Ma, the tomatoes or some pathogen? I guess we know now. Seems she loves all of Her creations, including Late Blight. Hmmm.

The good news is that the organism that causes Late Blight has no history of overwintering in the Northeast U.S. Once infected plants die, so does the disease. Plant pathologists are concerned about a situation in which late blight does develop the capacity to overwinter here, but so far that has not occurred (as far as they know).

So again, the really good news is that both gardeners and farmers have no reason to expect late blight to be any more of a threat in 2010 than it was in any other year. And 2009 can be considered an unusual year for the disease. Since the organism requiures a living host, there is no need to plan elaborate crop rotations or go to extremes in trying to kill what is already dead. Dead tomatoes equal dead late blight. Unless the spuds get us….

Now about those potatoes…. Recall that late blight can survive in living tissue and since the same organism infects both tomatoes and potatoes … do you know where your spuds are? The concern is that infected potatoes are laying cull piles or worse, stockpiled for planting. Don’t do this! Buy certified, clean, potato planting stock!. It ain’t worth starting the epidemic of 2010 to save a few bucks on seed potatoes. And that means your precious heirloom varieties, too. If you grew potatoes in 2009 and experienced late blight, be alert for volunteer spuds next spring and destroy them.

No problem with saved tomato seed.

I located an excellent summary of late blight and its management at UMass extension. It provides and excellent overview and advice for gardeners, including those using the organic approach.

For a utube segment by PSU's own plant pathologist, Beth Gugino, see this.

Bring me... A Shrubbery!

2010-01-21T14:59:00.004-05:00

According to Wikipedia “A shrubbery is a wide border to a garden where shrubs are thickly planted; or a similar, larger area with a path winding through it… a collection of hardy shrubs … distinct from the flower garden.” Wikipedia also referenced the poet Milton and more to my taste, Monty Python. You may recall that The Knights who say Ni demanded a shrubbery of King Arthur. A nice one but not too expensive.

Penn State’s new Guide for Selecting Shrubs for Pennsylvania Landscapes says .. “Shrubs act as intermediate units working in partnership with trees to provide scale and structure for the larger shade trees and the people and animals that interact with the landscape.” Yes indeed , my cat sleeps in the shrubbery.

This is a great new reference created by Penn State Horticulture Department faculty. It describes more than 200 shrubs for Pennsylvania landscapes. For planning purposes the guide is divided between deciduous and evergreen shrubs. These are arranged by size…less than 3 feet, 3-5 feet, 5-9 feet, etc. Excellent information for planning a shrubbery.

Shrubs native to Pennsylvania are indicated for those of you who are planning with this in mind. Last year I planted Clethera and Itea, a couple of natives that tolerate very wet sites. Great plants. Bees love them.

With more than 200 species mentioned, you’ll of course find Junipers and Viburnum, Taxus and Rhododendron, Cotoneaster and Cornus. But also less know genera such as Xanthorhiza, Indigofera, and Eubotrys.

It won’t be long before we can think about planting outside again. A Guide for Selecting Shrubs for Pennsylvania Landscapes is a great planning reference and inspiration. Read it on line, call us (215-345-3283) for a free copy or order from Penn State.

The ABCs of Beekeeping

2009-12-18T15:16:00.006-05:00

In January, I’ll conduct a beginner’s beekeeping course in Doylestown, PA. It will just be the ABC’s…not the ABCs’ and XYZ’s of beekeeping. The latter is the title of a famous and (still published ) book on beekeeping. The registration information is posted on the web . Or you can give us an old fashioned phone call at Penn State Extension, 215-345-3283 and request a brochure if you think you are interested.

Interest in bees and beekeeping has grown tremendously in the last several years. Probably as a result of the widely publicized Colony Collapse Disorder. As a beekeeper, I find it very heartening that so many folks pay attention to this and are concerned.

Interest in honey bees is not new. It is a hobby that has been entertaining and rewarding people for thousands of years. A Philadelphian named Lorenzo Langstroth really got things going when he invented the modern hive with movable and interchange parts in the 1850’s.

Apparently some folks are so concerned about the plight of bees that they want to start hobby beekeeping. I imagine that for others, there was a dormant desire to learn about bees that was awakened by bees in the news. Some gardeners feel that they need to keep bees to ensure pollination for their crops… especially as they notice fewer and fewer honeybees visiting flowers. But our native pollinators (honey bees are not native to North America) actually do a very good job of moving pollen in small gardens. It is the big-time fruit and vegetable producers that really need honey bees. Maybe you’ve heard that more than a million colonies of bees go to California each spring for almond pollination.

There are about 25,000 honey bee colonies in Pennsylvania and 2 million nation-wide. Most of these are maintained by commercial beekeepers. On the other hand, my estimate is that more than 95 % of all beekeepers are hobbyists. If you have an eye for the stacks of 16 by 20 inch boxes that kept bees generally live in, you’ll finds bee hives everywhere. City beekeepers are common in San Francisco, New York, Paris and most cities.

My bee course will be conducted on four consecutive Tuesday evenings beginning on Janaury 26. Interestingly, My co-hort, Tom Butzler, in Clinton County Extension, will be conducting a bee keeping course on- line in January also. Since you are on the web maybe this also appeals to you. Or do both! For more info on Tom's course see this.

Hoe, Hoe, Hoe...Holiday Shopping for Gardeners

2009-12-10T14:45:00.005-05:00

Gardening is supposed to be America’s most popular hobby. So, chances are, you know a gardening enthusiast well enough to be thinking about a holiday gift for them.

Here are some ideas in case you are still wondering what to get them.

OK, I guess I have to say it because I work for Penn State but you really can’t go wrong with a Penn State soil test kit. The “kit” is not a “do it yourself “ deal but a service provide by Penn State. Cost is reasonable (nine bucks) and it is guaranteed to be useful. Unique, too. Soil test results tell gardeners about the nutrient needs of their gardens. If you want to splurge, go ahead and get that optional organic matter test for a few bucks more. Check out the details at Penn State's Ag Analytical Services or contact your local extension office . Soil test kits make good stocking stuffers.

Books …. Here are a few that are sure to please.

Every gardener deals with weeds. My favorite weed book is Weeds of the Northeast. 300 pages of color pictures and descriptions of the most common weeds found in the northeast U.S…all for about 30 bucks.

Woody plant lovers generally consider Manual of Woody Landscape Plants by Dirr to be the most useful and comprehensive book on woody plants in the U.S. I use it weekly. The fifth edition is 1100 pages…. a winner. Dirr has companion picture books that bring the text to life. Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs is one of them.

Another great tree book is Trees for American Gardens by Donald Wyman. A oldie but a goodie is A Natural History of North American Trees by Donald Culross Peattie… part poetry, part botany. Nothing else like it.

If you have a hard core botanist in the family… consider The Plants of Pennsylvania by Rhoads and Block. About 3000 Pennsylvania plants are described.

You aren’t likely to find any of these texts in the local book store or even the big box-book stores but you will find them online.

It is a bit tricky to get the right tools for gardeners but I don’t know any gardener who wouldn’t like a pair of Felco hand pruners. They are the “gold standard” in pruning equipment and Felco has an amazing array of options… did you know lefties need custom pruners and that small hands need smaller tools? Check it out.

Other stuff… how about a membership in the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, Morris Arboretum or passes to Longwood Gardens? Garden centers offer gift certificates.

Has someone been naughty this year? Arrange for a load of mulch to be dropped in the driveway Christmas morning.

Witchhazel, a Blooming Fall Treat.

2009-11-18T11:08:00.004-05:00

Just when you thought the last flower had bloomed… along comes Witchhazel. The picture here is of Hamamelis virginiana, Common Witchhazel growing on a mountain top in central Pennsylvania. It sure lights up the woods on a fall day. It is not that the bloom is extremely large… but the fact that nothing else is blooming makes it special.

I don’t see Common Witchhazel in too many nursery/garden centers but what you will find are Hamamelis x intermida hybrids. The most common is 'Arnold Promise' and for good reason. It produces beautiful ,strap-like, yellow flowers in mid-winter and that certainly gets your attention….especially if there is some snow to provide a contrast. Nothing like bloom mid January to get your juices flowing.

There are red flowering hybrids, too. I have observed the cultivar 'Jelena' for several years and its’ coppery colored red flowers are very distinct. It also blooms in early to mid winter.

There is a nice specimen of 'Arnold Promise' planted along the walk way leading to the Bucks County Extension office. It is part of our fledgling Almshouse Arboretum. Penn State Master Gardeners have planted more than sixty trees on the grounds of Neshaminy Manor Center since 2007. Many of these plants were provided by Tree Vitalize , a private-public program with the goal of enhancing tree canopy in Pennsylvania.

In fact, just a week ago a hardy crew of Penn State Master Gardeners planted nine more trees. (Normally I assist them but I was in the woods looking at Witchhazels.

This reminds me that it is still a great time to plant trees and shrubs. We have planted about half of the Almshouse Arboretum trees in the fall with a 100% success rate. So, check out your local garden center and make a deal on good quality trees and shrubs.

Lady Bug, Lady Bug... Fly to Someone Else’s Home!

2009-10-22T11:23:00.006-04:00

Good week for encounters with lady bugs… the Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle, Harmonia axyridis , to be exact. On Tuesday, I noticed them as they flew to my arms near a sunny orchard. On Wednesday, the local TV station called to get the story on “swarming” lady beetles invading homes. Sure enough, a Perkasie home had thousands of beetles on the sunny south side of the house. Warm days, following cool nights, (light frost in Perkasie Monday)seems to inspire them to seek overwintering quarters.

Most of us are familiar with the native, red beetle with black spots that probably inspired that children’s ditty. I can’t locate the literary reference. (Help someone!). Almost everyone looks fondly on the red lady bug and gardeners know that they are beneficial in the garden. They eat aphids and other destructive insects.

But the bug of the week is a relatively recent introduction. Literally. The multi-colored Asian Lady Beetle was purposely introduced to the USA as a beneficial insect, designed to apply some biological pressure to destructive, introduced pests. In Pennsylvania, introductions were made in the 1970s and 80’s. They’re good bugs…. tell that to folks who have thousands in their homes.

I feel bad for entomophobic (insect fearing) people. There are so many insects in the world. More than a million species. Books say that there are more species of insects than all other animal species, combined. Most of them are pretty and interesting. A few are not appreciated by people because they destroy crops, sting or carry disease. A few are appreciated for their beauty (butterflies) or utility (honey bees). But insects are just “bugs” to most people and for some reason are not loved. All have a role to play in the grand scheme of things, I suppose. So give a bug a break. Play a game of finding their names and then see what they are all about. (How about it, Amy?) You might be pleasantly surprised.

So, back to the bug of the week. Good bug… eats aphids and scale insects that harm plants. Bad bug,… gets in the house because it is seeking overwintering quarters in you warm home. In their native habitat (Asia) they use warm cliff faces as overwintering quarters. The sunny south side of our houses must seem similar.

The good news is that they are not harmful to people (minor exceptions) or our structures; they do not reproduce inside our homes. Seal up cracks and crevices to prevent their entry, just as you would do to prevent invasions of Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs or Box Elder Bugs. Insecticides are not usually effective. Once inside, a vacuum cleaner, fitted with a stocking to collect them works well. Some folks are so bug loving they save them and release them next spring. See this for details. Now that’s loving a bug!

Thanks to Iowa State University for the bug pic. There are loads of articles on this insect if you want to search the web. Stick to .edu sites for the best info.

Morris Arboretum… A Horticultural Gem in our Backyard

2009-10-09T09:31:00.004-04:00

This week I joined the Philadelphia Branch of the Professional Grounds Management Society (PGMS) for a visit to Morris Arboretum. PGMS is the professional home for the people who manage grounds at schools, universities, public and private gardens, municipal parks and other such places. Did you ever stop to wonder who was making those places look so nice? Visiting interesting sites is part of the professional development this group enjoys and twenty-five of us took part in the visit to Morris. Past PGMS National President and pal Kevin O’Donnell, Superintendent of Grounds at Villanova University, arranged this event.

We had a real treat when Jan McFarland, Education Director at Morris and her colleagues gave us a behind the scenes tour. Morris Arboretum is associated with the University of Pennsylvania and is the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. After learning about the educational programs that Morris offers to professional horticulturists and the public we took off to the tree tops. Perhaps you’ve heard about “Out on Limb”, the unique feature at Morris Arboretum where visitors can scramble around like a squirrel in at tree-top height, securely of course. Indeed, a whole new way of looking at trees.

Jason Lubar, Director of Urban Forestry, lead the group I was in. Jason took us to a fantastic grove of Dawn Redwoods, (Metasequoia glyptostroboides… why is it that I can spell this but not squirel?) which appear to be ancient. Tree people know that this species was not known in the western world until the 1940’s so these trees are actually only about 60 years old. Hard to believe, but true. These trees are some of the first to be planted outside of China, its recent, native habitat. References say it was on our continent 15 million years ago and has been on earth for more than 100 million years.

Morris Arboretum is renowned for introducing interesting new plants to the West. We also stood beneath one of the largest Katsuratrees (Cercidiphyllum japonicum, native to Japan and China) I’ve ever seen and took in the unique fragrance of its fall foliage. Believe it or not, most folks agree it smells like cotton candy!

One thing that makes an arboretum different from a walk in the woods is that the plants are labeled… a great thing if you want to learn plant names. At Morris, the origin and age of plants is also displayed. There are more than 13,000 labeled plants in all so you may need more than one visit to take it all in. Fortunately, members of the Arboretum have unlimited admission year round. Membership also provides reciprocal admission to more than 200 gardens nationwide and invitation to special events. I think I heard Jason say they had a beer tasting recently. Hmmm. I know that I only scratched the surface of this wonderful horticultural gem. I’ll be back.

Morris Arboretum is located in the farthest northwest territory of Philadelphia County and is open seven days a week. Check it out!

Can I Compost those Diseased Tomato Plants?

2009-09-22T11:52:00.004-04:00

Yes. That’s the short and simple answer to a question that is on many gardeners minds. The disease that concerns most gardeners this year is late blight, Phytophthora infestans, which plagued so many gardens and farms this year. I have spoken to too many gardeners who are wasting time solarizing tomato vines, planning elaborate crop rotations or sending tomato debris out with the trash. Compost them. It’s also good to know that most diseased plants can be composted without the fear of aggravating the disease situation next year.

Let’s take late blight first because it is easiest. The late blight organism requires a living host to survive. Since tomatoes cannot survive our winters, any late blight fungus will die along with the plant. May as well compost the diseased plants. Or you could simply turn them into the soil. For that matter you could let the dead tomato skeletons hang out all winter on their stakes. Dead tomatoes = dead late blight. Late blight does not form overwintering spores in Pennsylvania that could cause new infections next year.

Potatoes are another story. Late blight infected potato foliage can be treated like tomato foliage. But infected tubers should not be put into the compost pile. Tubers may survive the winter and start up new infections next spring.

Most other tomato diseases do have the ability to survive and infect tomato again next year. Early blight, Septoria leaf spot and anthracnose can survive either on plant debris, in special fungal survival structures, on other plants and even on pots and containers. Crop rotation provides some small measure of control but you can expect these diseases to return each year regardless of crop rotation. And let’s face it, we often have limited ability to rotate crops in our small vegetable gardens. Do it, as a good general pest management strategy, but realize it will not eliminate re-occurrence of disease.

Back to that compost pile… since the environment in the compost pile is much more competitive for fungal pathogens than soil, and these disease organisms will survive thru other means, why not compost those diseased plants?
There are a few garden diseases that surely should not go into the compost pile. Fusarium and Verticillium wilt come to mind, but they are relatively rare these days because of good plant breeding. If you suspect that these are involved then trash them. Otherwise… everything into the compost pile.

Pretty Yellow Fall Flowers

2009-09-14T10:21:00.004-04:00

Inquiring minds want to know…. What is that pretty, yellow, daisy-like flower that is blooming now? It’s commonly found in wet ditches. I’ve been asked that question many times in the last week or so. Several species in the genus Bidens, commonly called tickseed-sunflower are found in Pennsylvania. I am not sure exactly which species I’m seeing near Bedminster, probably Bidens aristosa. They are called “tick seed” because they produce seed bearing structures that stick to you like ticks (related species are called beggar’s ticks).
If you take autumn walks in the woods and fields you are probably familiar with these two-pronged plant parts.

The showy “ray” flowers look like their relatives the Sunflowers. You can see how the common names of plants are both useful and potentially confusing. It is worthwhile to learn the Latin names of plants if you are more than a casual observer. All plant identification books use the Latin names because it provides nomenclature (names) that are definitive. Plants belong to families that are composed of related genera and this can be helpful as you try to sort out plant names. Both Sunlfowers (Helianthus) and Tickseed Sunflowers (Bidens) are in the Aster Family (Asteraceae).

For that matter, Goldenrods (Solidago), Asters (Aster) White-snakeroot (Eupatorium rugosum) are also members of the Aster family that bloom in the fall. In addition to being pretty, they provide forage for bees of all sorts that are important pollinators.

When I want to sort out details about plants in Pennsylvania, I usually end up looking in... .The Plants Of Pennsylvania, an illustrated (line drawings only) manual written by Ann Rhoads and Timothy Block, botanists at the University of Pennsylvania. It is a fantastic reference.

Fall is for Planting… Trees, Shrubs, Bulbs and Vegetables

2009-09-02T10:01:00.004-04:00

Yea, I know. I blogged about this last year. But this message is worth repeating because fall is such an outstanding time to plant trees, shrubs, bulbs lawns and, as I wrote in mid August, many vegetable crops, too.

OK, the basics one more time, then some particulars… the reason fall is such a good time to plant: soil temperatures are warm which is good for root growth; air temperatures are cooling and rainfall is usually plentiful which reduces the need to do maintenance irrigation; deciduous plants are dropping leaves but roots remain active long afterwards which allows for establishment; winter dormancy is followed by Spring, another season of cool, moist weather that aids establishment before the stresses of summer; plant material at nursery/garden centers is plentiful and often a bargain as retailers try to shed inventory.

This was such an outstanding year for turfgrass growth that the number of people feeling the need to re-seed is probably lower than normal. However, if you want to re-seed a lawn, Penn State has outlined the steps is this publication. The key is to suppress the weeds, raise the fertility and then seed the correct species by lightly incorporating the seed into the soil. A “slit seeder” available at most good rental places is the ideal tool. It cuts a small groove into the soil and drops seed in one operation.

Penn State has dozens of publications on lawn management that deal with fall lawn care. Besides planting, there are other chores that are best performed in the fall such as broadleaf weed control, liming, fertilizing and aeration. Check it out.

Penn State Master Gardeners will be planting trees in our little Almshouse Arboretum at Neshaminy Manor Center in November. We’re hooked into the Tree Vitalize program that provides” bare root” trees to public areas in an effort to re-vitalize tree cover in Southeastern Pennsylvania. We’ve planted more than fifty trees, both spring and fall, with a one hundred percent success rate. Here’s a link to specifics on tree planting instructions. Buy good quality plants and you, too will have great success.

Finally, back to the vegetable garden. Last night I seeded spinach. I was waiting for soil temperatures to cool down a bit because spinach germination is adversely affected by high soil temperatures (above 85 degrees). Some of that spinach will be harvested this fall. Some of it I’ll allow to overwinter, providing an early harvest next spring.

There are still about 6 weeks until our first frost and we often experience a long warm period of growing weather after that first freeze. That’s what make the fall vegetable garden so nice and productive. The leafy vegetables, root crops and cole (cabbage family) crops all thrive in the cool fall air.

My first broccoli is ready for harvest and a bunch more is on the way. Brussels sprouts buds are beginning to swell, lettuce plantings are up and more are on the way. Broccoli rabe always germinates in about 3 days and I look forward to my own sausage sandwich, South Philly style in a few weeks with that rabe on top.

Vegetable Garden, Round 2… the Fall Garden

2009-08-10T13:37:00.004-04:00

Spots, rots and blights be damned… keep planting! That’s my advice to vegetable gardeners. We are about to enter Round Two of the gardening season and it can be very rewarding. I’m talking about the Fall garden. Sure, it’s still summer but by taking a few simple steps now you can be way head come September and October.

Rip out those blighted tomatoes, monster squash plants, ragged cukes and weedy patches. Then seed ‘em. I’m talking about beets, carrots, turnips (yes, turnips are tasty) lettuce and cilantro. Fall spinach is wonderful and September plantings will overwinter and provide spring crops. Transplant cool weather, cole crops (cabbage family).

The entire cabbage family thrives in the fall garden. Right now you can find six-packs of broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts (yes, Brussels sprouts are tasty) and cabbage in some garden centers. Get these transplants into the ground in mid-August and you’ll be enjoying nice harvests in late September and October. Many years the quality of the fall crops is better than spring.

Because fall air temperatures and day length are moderate and declining, the fall garden is very different that the spring version. Crop growth slows and quality holds very well. Weed growth slows and even stops in some cases, with the first frost. It’s a pleasure to work outside again without working up a sweat.

What to do with all of those dead and diseased plants? How about the wheelbarrow loads of weeds? Compost them! That’s right, compost them. Almost every composting book and manual warns against this. Nonsense! (most of the time). The vast majority of the diseases that affect our vegetable crops will not be spread, enhanced or aggravated by composting the affected foliage. Several reasons. First, the compost pile is a very vicious place. Good fungi destroy the bad. Even simple soil incorporation of dead plants works in your favor. There are a few exceptions but don’t sweat it. Compost that stuff.

Consider the farmers. Do they put diseased plants in the trash? Nope. They plow them down and rotate crop location. Sure, our rotation options in a small garden are limited. Makes composting diseased stuff a smart move. Finally, understand that our most common fungal, bacterial and viral pathogens survive in or near the garden naturally. Even if you tried extreme sanitation, you’ll be visited by the ancestors of 2009 powdery mildew, early blight and botrytis in 2010.

What about those weeds. Two potential problems… weed seeds and the fleshy storage organs of perennials. Yea, it would be nice to eliminate weed seeds but I’d be willing to bet that a lot of those weeds in your garden have already set and dropped a lot of seed. When you pull them up even more will shed. Are you going to pick them up? Didn’t think so. So what’s the dif if they go into the compost pile where they have less chance of survival? The perennials? I don’t know what planet those folks are from that talk about perennials surviving composting. Even a cold compost pile that is turned a few times will destroy perennial roots, rhizomes and stolons. So compost away! I think the warning about not composting weeds comes from the common experience of importing compost or manure from remote locations and discovering new weed species the next year. Yep, this bound to happen…. weed seeds. Some are annuals, some perennials. But the weeds we are pulling in our gardens this year have already taken up residence. Recycling them thru your compost does not make the situation worse. Compost ‘em!

Thousands of Flower Cultivars on Display at Penn State's Trials near Lancaster

2009-07-23T14:41:00.006-04:00

Sometimes you just need a break from the gloom and doom of mid-summer plant disease epidemics (late blight) and want to look at pretty flowers. So that’s what I did this week and visited Penn State’s Southeast Pennsylvania Research and Extension Center, near Lancaster.

Each year, more than 1000 different cultivars of flowering annual plants are established and evaluated by Sr. Extension Educator, Alan Michael. Quite an undertaking. The results are of great interest to plant breeders, salesfolks, garden center managers, greenhouse operators, and plant lovers in general. As I write this, hundreds of folks are attending the open house which is held each July. I snuck out a day early to avoid the crowds. My pal Al gave me a personal tour of the trial highlights. One of the great things about the research center is that you, too, can drop in for a visit any weekday between 8 a.m and 3 p.m. The plants are well labeled and you are welcome to do a self-guided tour. I highly recommend it. Or do a virtual tour by visiting this website.

I am more of a fruit and vegetable guy than a posy lover but man does not live by bread alone so I also try to learn something about the ornamental plants. The Coleus and Petunia cultivars are knockouts. It is worth the trip just to see ‘Pretty Much Picasso’ Petunia. Begonias for full sunlight are stunning. Do you know Angelonia? Torenia? How about Calitunia (a Petunia x Calibrachoa cross). A handy cultivar list provided at the trials makes note taking easy.

So before the summer is over, take a day trip to the Flower Trials at Penn State’s research farm. Stop in Lancaster for a whoopee pie. If you’re free this Saturday, July 25, check out the “Summer Garden Experience”. It includes free lectures, Master Gardener demonstrations, a native plant sale and, of course, the flower trials.

Late Blight of Tomato Continues to Spread

2009-07-13T16:56:00.004-04:00

You’ve been warned. Late blight is here and continues to affect commercial and home plantings of tomato and potato. A farmer friend called me minutes ago to report a farm right across the river where tomato was confirmed with late blight.

Now it seems a matter of time before we see wholesale injury to this popular crop. Although relatively dry weather has prevailed recently, morning dew in enough to support late blight infection.

I could say more but my co-horts in Lehigh Co have done a great job. See this link.

The best pictures I've seen are from Cornell.

Late blight of tomato and potato arrives early this year

2009-07-06T16:26:00.003-04:00

I had hoped that I would not write about late blight this year. Usually it is August or September before late blight rears its head in our area. So writing about it in early July is a bad sign for gardeners and farmers. But it is here. A perverse combination of the widespread sale of infected tomato plants and abnormally cool, wet, weather in June was the perfect storm. The disease has been confirmed in almost all Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states, including in Lancaster and Lehigh counties in southeastern Pennsylvania.

This devastating fungal disease is a threat to all tomato and potato growers. It is the same fungus that was involved in the Irish potato famine of the 1840’s. While no one will starve in 2009 due to late blight, it appears that we are in for an unusually early and wide spread epidemic. Plant pathologists are reporting that this is the earliest the organism has been found in such a wide spread area of the Northeast U.S. The problem is, this fungus can travel many miles in the air, settling out on host plants and spreading infections. Apparently, widespread sale of infected transplants has inoculated the northeast. Many of these locations will be home gardens where it will go unnoticed until it is too late. Nearby commercial plantings are at risk.

The fungal pathogen involved in late blight disease is Phytophthora infestans. It thrives under cool (60-70 degree) moist (dew rain, humidity) conditions. Host plants include tomato, potato, other tomato family plants and, believe it or not, petunia. Foliage, stems and fruit blackens. Unlike the slow progression of early blight described in the previous blog, late blight moves like lightning. That’s why plant pathologists watch like hawks for its emergence and alert commercial growers to its presence.

Fungicides can protect plants and limit the spread of the disease. Famers have good options but must be vigilant and proactive. Gardeners have the fungicides chlorothalonil and copper. Copper is a poor second choice but some forms are organically approved. More details, instructions and pictures from Cornell University can be found here. And at this Penn State site. Plant pathologists recommend treating now, rather than waiting for signs of infection. This fungus is amongus.

Spots and Rots and Blights...Oh My! Plant Diseases 101

2009-06-23T16:19:00.006-04:00

You might find lions and tigers and bears frightening but farmers and gardeners would disagree. Groundhogs and rabbits and deer can be more destructive. And then there are the fungi. Early blight, late blight and anthracnose. Black spot and mildew and scab. Rusts and rots and wilts. It’s a jungle out there!

Fungi are certainly the most common organisms associated with plant disease. I say “associated” because the pathogen, by itself, does not equal disease. A susceptible host plant and the proper environment are also necessary.

Here’s a timely example. By now, tomato growers are probably noticing brown spots and perhaps yellowing of the lower leaves. On closer inspection, you may see that the “spot” is actually a lesion that has concentric rings of dead tissue. There may be tiny black dots in the dead tissue. As the season progresses more and more foliage is killed. Fruit infections cause soft spots and rots. All of these symptoms describe the common tomato disease called early blight. The disease also affects potato and eggplant. Some of you will be happy to learn that two weeds, horse nettle and black nightshade, are vulnerable, too. Since all of these plants are related, it is not surprising that they are susceptible hosts for the same pathogen. Note also that the early blight pathogen has no effect on asparagus, beans, cucumbers or you. (Sometimes folks ask if it is OK to eat diseased vegetables. It is.). The pathogen has a scientific name Alternaria solani.

OK we have a susceptible plant and a pathogen. The final ingredient needed for disease is the proper environment. This pathogen thrives and reproduces well under warm, moist conditions. The weather in the month of June, 2009 in Southeastern, PA was about perfect for early blight. Especially for tomatoes that were left to sprawl on the ground rather than trained to a support system which favored air movement and leaf drying.

Bingo! Early Blight of Tomato!

Maybe that was more than you wanted to know about early blight but it is useful. You can manage this disease (and all others) by thinking about three key disease ingredients: pathogen, host and environment. Sometimes it is possible and effective to eliminate the pathogen. But it can be equally effective to grow non-susceptible host plants or modify the environment. Disease resistant varieties have been developed for many of your favorite plants. Look for them when buying seed. Learn about the conditions that favor disease. Do what you can to change it. For most fungal diseases that means increasing air movement and reducing leaf wetness.

For a descriptions and gory pictures of common vegetable diseases, type “vegetable disease” into the search box at www.agsci.psu.edu.

For a complete guide to growing tomatoes and info on more tomato diseases go to http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/pdfs/uj230.pdf

Thanks to University of Minnesota Extension for the nice image of early blight shown above.

April Showers Bring May Flowers but… June Monsoons are not a Boon for Most Plants

2009-06-18T14:58:00.004-04:00

Just checked a weather web site and it confirms the feeling most of us in Southeastern PA have…soggy. Only three days out of the last eighteen did not have measurable precipitation. Six inches in the last 30 days; this is 160 % of normal. Minimal sunshine. Below normal temperatures.

My farm friends are hurting. Can’t plant. Too wet. You might not be thinking of Halloween yet but farmers are because pumpkins are a 100-day crop that needs to be in the ground now in order to make fruit by this fall. The sweet corn you enjoy in August is planted in June. Perishable crops such as strawberries that are at peak maturity are melting in the field. Weeds thrive in these conditions and it is impossible to cultivate wet soil. Saturated soils and continually wet foliage are ideal for many plant diseases. Ever seen plant wilt because it’s too wet? I have.

Mother Nature can be cruel to folks trying to grow stuff …. gardeners and farmers. As hard as this can be on gardeners, consider the farmer whose income is dependent on favorable weather. Most fruit and vegetable farmers will take a dry year over a wet one, especially if they have access to irrigation.

Any upside to all of this? Well your lawn probably looks great. If you planted trees this spring the watering chore has been minimal. And this can’t last forever. Gardeners and farmers have to be optimists because if it ain’t one thing it’s another when you are playing ball with Mother Nature.

For those growing ornamental plants, Penn State has a very helpful web site describing plant diseases and their management. Check it out.

Poison Ivy

2009-06-16T14:06:00.002-04:00

As I drove into our office complex today I noticed a member of the grounds crew cleaning up stems that had been sheared from a privet hedge. Most of it was privet, but I also knew that there was plenty of poison ivy in there, too. I had been observing it for a few weeks, thinking about the challenge of killing poison ivy that is entwined in landscape plants.

I stopped and chatted with him to be sure that he knew what he was dealing with. Sure enough, his arms were blistered up from previous encounters with this weed. We shared remedies for the itch, methods to control the weed and ended up wondering if there was anything positive about poison ivy. I know that bees and other insects collect its nectar and pollen; birds eat the seed. The grounds man thought there might be some therapeutic, whole-body effect from having the rash… what a great attitude!

Poison ivy, Toxicodendron radicans, is a native, perennial, woody vine that is the major cause of allergic dermatitis in the Eastern U.S. according to Weeds of the Northeast, (Cornell University Press). It is very commonly found in Pennsylvania and easy to identify, despite the fact that its leaf characteristics vary somewhat, depending on where it is growing. “Leaflets of three, let it be”, is a saying that begins to draw your attention to key characteristics. The center leaflet extends on a relatively long stalk. The upper surfaces of the leaves are often quite shiny, especially when growing in full sunlight. The leaflets are usually lobed or coarsely toothed. Mature plants climb trees with the aid of aerial rootlets and the older stems become rope-like and quite hairy. But poison ivy is often found running along the ground in the forest understory, and there, the leaves are dull green. Both the newly emerging spring growth and fall foliage are red. Contact with any part of the plant causes a skin rash in most people.

Since poison ivy is perennial, it is not easily controlled by mechanical methods such as mulching, pulling or mowing. In woods and other unmanaged areas, just learn to recognize it and enjoy its beauty in all seasons. If it is growing in places where you or others (unsuspecting kids) are likely to bump into it, you can control it chemically.

Two herbicides, glyphosate (sold a Roundup and many other trade names) and triclopyr (Sold as Brush-B-Gone and others) will kill poison ivy. I think triclopyr is most effective. Glyphosate products will kill or injure any green plant that it contacts. Triclopyr will not injure grasses and this may make it useful in some settings. Both products are applied to the foliage of target weeds. In fact, healthy weed foliage is important for maximum uptake and translocation of the herbicide. Neither product is root absorbed so you can be quite selective by applying the herbicide only where you want it. As long as desirable plant foliage is not contacted it is safe from injury. Read the labels for complete instructions.

So, before the year is over, and once the poison ivy re-grows from the hedge (which it surely will) I hope to help the grounds crew selectively and carefully wipe one of these herbicides onto the poison ivy growing in the privet, avoiding all privet foliage.

Swarm Stories

2009-06-01T13:41:00.005-04:00

One of Nature’s most interesting reproductive behaviors is honeybee swarming. Honeybees are very social animals and some experts have even suggested that a colony of honeybees can be more properly thought of as a “super-organism”, collectively, rather than individual bees. Honeybees cannot exist for long on their own. They must belong to a colony. Of course, reproduction of individual bees does occur but always for the purpose of restocking the colony with functional individuals who play a role in the bigger “organism”, the colony.

Reproduction of the colony occurs by swarming. One egg-laying individual (a queen), several thousand workers (sterile females) and a few fat fellows (drones) split off from the established colony, leaving behind a new queen and most of the workers. The swarm is seeking a new home, preferably a high and dry hollow space. Hollow trees, chimneys and voids in walls of buildings are fine.

Swarms always make a brief lay-over after leaving the hive and before arriving at their final destination. This is usually a tree limb, shrub, mailbox, car bumper or fence post. That’s when it gets interesting, even for people who usually don’t give insects a second thought. There is nothing like a 3 pound mass of bees to get folks excited. And the take-off and landing is bizarre… a cyclone of stinging insects, moving with purpose.

Most people who get to see a honeybee swarm arrive or depart feel fortunate to have witnessed it. It’s hard to describe. You kind of have to bee there to appreciate it.

Practical matters… honey bees in a swarm are not inclined to sting. They are most interested in getting settled into a permanent home. Most swarms remain at the lay-over spot less than a day.

So, if you encounter one, just enjoy it and soon they’ll be gone. If they end up staying more than 2 days, find a beekeeper to remove it. In fact, beekeepers are almost always interested in picking up swarms, provided they are reasonably close to the ground (less than 10 feet high). Beekeepers provide good homes to wayward bees. Usually, by the time you contact the beekeeper and he makes his way to the swarm, it has moved on. In any event, swarms are generally harmless and temporary. It doesn’t do much good to try to make them do what you want unless you are a beekeeper or trained exterminator. Certainly spraying them with water or insecticides is not productive.

Swarm season in Pennsylvania lasts from about mid-May until mid-June. Enjoy it while you can. Click on swarm picture above for a close-up look.

A Bit Nippy?

2009-05-20T12:06:00.003-04:00

I heard a familiar sound Tuesday morning, May 19, at about daybreak… someone scraping frost off of a windshield. I pulled up the covers and went back to sleep. My tomatoes and blooming strawberries were also nestled under warm blankets, protected from the cold. Later, I read my min/max thermometer and saw that the overnight low was 30 degrees… enough to kill bloom and flatten tender vegetable plants. My farming friends confirmed that it was below freezing. They protected acres of tender plants with row covers or sprinkler irrigation. Areas west of here reached 23 degrees by some accounts. Wow!

Row covers are a great way to get a few degrees of frost protection. Most garden catalogs sell them now. They are very light weight blankets made of spun-bonded polypropylene. Got my tomatoes thru the night and protected blooming strawberries from crop failure. Easy to apply and last for years. Add a wire hoop and you have mini greenhouse. Pictures above show a farm field with a more advanced version of row covers as well as the lightweight version in a garden bed.

Was this late frost the nasty side of Mother Nature? Maybe…its but not unexpected. Official records tell us that frosts have occurred throughout Bucks County until the last week in May. May 13 is the “frost-free” date for southern Bucks and May 28 in Northern Bucks. “Frost-free” means that after this date, 90 % of the time, there will be no further temperature below freezing. So, in fact, some of us have to sweat it out for another week, given the 1 in 10 chance of frost. But the weather woman says we’ll be OK. Summer temperatures are predicted for the rest of the month. Some folks use Mother’s Day as the green light to plant tomatoes another tender crops and that is a good guideline… but I always check the 10 day forecast about Mothers’ Day and plant accordingly.

And frost is not the whole story. Tomatoes do not thrive when night temperatures are in the low forties or colder. Peppers and eggplant are even more cold sensitive. And those folks seeding cukes, zukes and melons before June 1 are asking for trouble. There is a difference between surviving and thriving.

Want to get a jump on the growing season with the cukes, zukes and melons? Start seeds in peat pots or other small containers NOW. Plant in 10-14 days. You’ll have healthy plants with a leaf or two and minimal window-space disruption. In fact, start the plants on top of the fridge or any other spot that provides bottom heat. Move to light as soon as they germinate. Plant about June 1. Then watch out for cucumber beetles. Nobody said gardening was easy… they just said it was fun and interesting.

A fungus among us

2009-05-11T11:16:00.004-04:00

Cedar apple rust is is full bloom. OK not bloom; it is shedding spores from its "telial horns" if you want to get technical about it. Folks brought lots of samples into the Extension office last week.

If you look at our native Eastern Red Cedar, (which is actually a juniper, Juniperus virginiana)you'll see these nifty orange, gelatinous masses of fungal tissue. The warm, wet weather we had recently was ideal for them to burst into maturity. The spores that are released from these slimy galls are carried in the air to the alternate host for the disease... apple. In fact there are several related rusts which affect hawthorn and quince as well. The deciduous, alternate host (apple, etc) will develop bright orange spots on leaves later this spring and fruit on these plants may become rusty, russeted and malformed.

So, cedar-apple rust and it's relatives are very interesting plant diseases. Two unrelated plants sharing a disease. And for most of us, that's all there is to it.. an interesting disease. It sometimes causes damage to Junipers in landscape settings; unless you are growing apples to eat, the leaf spots it causes are not a big deal. Backyard fruit producers have a couple of options. Spray fungicides (last week would have been perfect) or grow apple varieties that are resistant to this disease. There are crabapple varieties that are resistant, too.

No, there are worse fungi among I. Apple scab, anthracnose, powdery mildew.... spores of all of these diseases are thicker than pollen in our current atmosphere. Their signs of infection will be showing up soon. Stay tuned for pictures and horror stories from the world of plant disease.

Pretty Yellow Flowers

2009-04-20T14:27:00.003-04:00

There is nothing like a splash of color in the landscape after a long dreary winter. So you’d think that folks would be excited and happy to see Lesser Celandine, Ranunculus ficaria which started blooming a couple weeks ago. It is still blooming now. You will most likely see it in low lying, moist areas such as stream banks. For a close look, go to the park in Edison along the Neshaminy Creek or the North Branch of Neshaminy Creek where it crosses Rt 611, south of Plumsteadville.

Besides the eight petaled, yellow flowers that rise slightly above the foliage, you’ll see that the very dark green, shinny leaves are kidney/heart shaped and somewhat waxy. Below ground you’ll find finger like tubers. Late in the season, cream colored aerial bulblets will form along the stems. You’ll only see it from March until June; then it fades away. It is often found in large, expansive masses. Once you have an eye for Lesser Celandine you’ll see it in other places. A friend’s entire small back yard is composed of it at this time of year.

This exotic (not native), invasive plant is called a spring ephemeral. It emerges before the hardwood trees leaf out, grows enough foliage to store energy in underground tubers, produces flowers and above ground bulblets and then fades away.

Ephemeral. But very invasive and does not play well with other plants. It will out-compete less aggressive ephemerals. The pretty tout lily is emerging now too and it does not appear to have a chance to win a battle for space and light with lesser celandine. That’s the problems with these invasive exotics. They are better adapted to their new home than the natives.If you see an isolated lesser celandine plant, kill it... or plan to enjoy it forever.

If this plant is getting the better of your landscape, you can apply glyphosate (Roundup, other names) now and get some control. If there are infestations near-by or if you live along a steam you’ll probably get re-infested via aerial bulblets. In drier, isolated landscape settings you might will the battle. Where very small infestations exist, just shovel it out. Be sure to get the tubers.

Horseradish

2009-04-09T15:46:00.004-04:00

Some crops are ready earlier than others. Horseradish is the first thing my garden yields each spring. I dig dormant roots from the garden and join some fellows who have a spring ritual of grinding up the roots in a food processor with a bit of vinegar and salt. That’s it. You’ve got a very unique condiment. (oh, peel the roots first). Excellent on ham or beef. A friend says she puts it in egg salad. A staple at a Seder. You can take it neat for a cheap thrill.

We processed this year’s crop last week. The 2009 vintage seems to be a bit milder than 2008, but with fruity hints of plum and licorice. I’m kidding…but it does seem a bit milder this year. Maybe that’s because we had to resort to using some store bought roots.

Horseradish may be the least demanding of the vegetable crops. It will grow almost anywhere. I’ve got mine in a soggy back end of the garden. A place where nothing but weeds will grow because it is so wet. Since all we want are roots, even some shade is not a problem. I guess the only potential problem is that since it is perennial it may become weedy. It has creeping underground roots.

If you can’t find a friend to give you a few pencil diameter roots about 6 inches long, you can mail order them from the same places that sell rhubarb and strawberries. Make a planting trench about five inches deep and lay the roots in with the top near the surface, spacing individual roots a least a foot apart. Cover the trench. I have even established new plants from just the crowns of roots that were harvested. As I mentioned, horseradish is a weed. In a year you’ll have roots to harvest. The better they grow, the thicker the root. Warning: The plants are big, coarse and ugly.
There are a few subtle details to horseradish making. Not much more on the growing. I found more advice than I could use on-line.
Next up, rhubarb!

Grow Your Own Fruit

2009-04-07T17:34:00.006-04:00

Interest in home food production is booming. Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe it’s an interest in locally produced food. Hey, even the president (or his wife and kids) now has a garden!
Most folks start with a vegetables and then graduate to fruit production. All of the fruit producing plants are perennial. This means more planning and more attention to site details. And complications such as cross pollination and rootstock emerge. Let’s face it… anyone can grow a tomato. It takes dedication and skill to produce your own apples, blueberries and peaches. But it can be done.
Before I get into details about some specific fruiting plants, here’s some good news. Penn State has produced an outstanding publication called Fruit Production for the Home Gardner. You can read the whole thing on line, order a copy from Penn State (814-865-6713) or stop by our office and pick up a copy for twelve dollars. Its 186 pages packed with practical fruit growing information.

If you are itching to try your hand at fruit production, here are some suggestions.

1. Start small. Make your mistakes on a small scale and add more if things are going well.

2. Make a realistic assessment of your site. You’ll need at least 8 hours of sunlight a day and soil that does not retain excess moisture. How can you tell? The sunlight part is easy. As for moisture… if your site has standing water for more than 24 hours after rainfall it’s probably too wet for perennial fruiting plants.

3. Think about deer. Deer will absolutely destroy new fruit plantings. If not in the growing season, then during the winter. Do not underestimate them. There are no shortcuts to deer control. If you have deer pressure only an 8 foot fence or hot lead will stop them. Don’t think about fencing individual plants. Think about fencing the entire fruit planting. Not always a pretty picture. If deer pressure is low to moderate, the odor repellents offer some temporary help.

4. Use dwarfing root stocks to control plant size wherever it make sense. Good size controlling rootstocks exist for apple, pear, and sweet cherry. Not so for peach and other tree fruits. I know, they sell them….but we don’t recommend them. You can control peach size by proper pruning.

5. Consider the brambles (raspberry and blackberry), blueberries, currents and strawberries before the tree fruits. They require less space, yield very well and come into production more quickly. They event tolerate a little shade.

6. Soil test, adjust soil pH and nutrient levels and work in organic matter into the entire planting site prior to planting. Dropping some amendments into the planting hole does not do the job. Spend the time and money to prepare the site well, even if this means delaying your planting one year. In the long run, you’ll be ahead.

7. Our local garden centers are great places to by many kinds of plants and supplies… but in my opinion, they are not the place to buy perennial fruit plants. Buy directly from the best mail-order nurseries (not those listed in the Sunday newspaper). The Penn State fruit publication has an extensive list of good nurseries.

8. Plant as early as possible in spring. Frosts are not a problem for the plants. Frosts will potentially affect bloom … but that’s down the road a bit.

9. Be realistic about pest control. Strawberries, blueberries, currents and the brambles have minimal pest problems and they are generally manageable with organic or low impact pest control measures. The tree fruits and grapes are a different story. Be prepared to make multiple pesticide sprays on these species or you will not be rewarded with anything edible.

10. Pay attention to cross pollination needs. There is not enough room here to go into the details. See references for guidance. Don’t worry about bees. Plant it and they will come.

Breaking New Ground

2009-03-23T16:55:00.005-04:00

It was a wonderful thing to see First Lady Obama and some kids starting a vegetable garden at the White House. I can imagine her first garden journal entry…”Sure was fun starting the garden. Kids had fun. Need to get better gardening clothes… maybe some bib overalls and decent work boots. Also, sure wish I had access to this site last fall. I could have done something about that sod. Raking sod is no joke. That bald guy looking on and shaking his head got me wondering if that was the best way to go about preparing a new garden. I wonder why we didn’t start with raised beds. At least we sent off our soil test sample on January 2 and have our results back already. That Extension Service is a wonderful organization. I wonder if they have any ideas on this?"

The bald guy shaking his head was me and I was watching via newspaper pictures of the first lady doing battle with that sod. And I only hope someone told them about soil testing.

Personally, I’d have had the grounds keeper strip off that sod with a sod cutter and start the First White House Compost Heap with it. Maybe try a little lasagna-style prep (newspaper layers) on sod that will be planted later this year with warm season crops. I certainly would have lobbied for raised beds. Could have killed that sod right in place. When I toured the White House grounds some years ago I noted that the lawn was a well fertilized, tall fescue sod. It ain’t giving up without a fight. It was laughing at the rake. Oh well, I am sure Michelle is gagging on gardening advice by now.

I got to thinking about this right after I got a call asking me when the “first till” date was for Bucks County. You know, "when can I till the garden?" There is no “first till” date but what we talked about was waiting until the soil had dried enough that tillage would not make pottery out of the soil. Wet soil and tillage is a bad combination. Then we had the discussion about using a tiller on sod. Tough way to start. Reminded me of poor Ms Obama and that rake.

I have no doubt that the First Garden will be a success. Hard work will overcome novice mistakes…and teach many lessons. It will be an inspiration to many people and remind everyone involved what an interesting, rewarding and challenging thing it is to grow your own food.

Now on to the First Apiary…”Ms. Obama, I’d suggest three-pound package bees headed by Buckfast queens; ten frame, Longstreth hives with wax (not plastic) foundation. It’s a good idea to…”

Spring Fever

2009-03-16T15:43:00.003-04:00

It doesn’t take much to get a gardener’s motors started. Just two consecutive days above 60 degrees usually does it. The forecast isn’t that good yet but my weatherman says that 7 of the next 10 days will have high temperatures in the 50’s. And it should be relatively dry. But it will be below freezing on several of those nights.

Time to plant the tomatoes? Not quite. Many of the things we grow in our gardens are tropical and will not tolerate cool temperatures, not to mention a freeze. In the vegetable world, we’d consider all of the vine crops (cucumbers, zukes, melons) to be most cold sensitive. Tomato, eggplant and pepper will tolerate a bit more cold stress but still prefer temps above 45 at a minimum. So, in Bucks County the vine crops go in about June 1 and the tomato/eggplant/pepper group in mid-May.

So, if you’re itching to plant something, what can you do? Start with hardy perennials. They don’t mind a freeze. All of the fruiting plants such as strawberry, brambles and fruit trees should be planted ASAP…as soon as the soil is fit to work. If you were thinking about planting trees and shrubs in the landscape, now if the time. No worries about cold temperatures here.

In the vegetable realm, think about leafy vegetable crops such as lettuce in a week or two. Onions and shallots can go in then, too. Root crops such as beets and carrots also tolerate early spring weather.

You can enhance the growth of early seeded crops and protect from wind and cold by using cold frames or floating row covers. In addition to cold protection these techniques increase daytime growing temperatures and accelerate growth.

In many areas the soil is still simply too wet to plant regardless of temperatures. Those of us with raised beds have an advantage since they dry out sooner than soil. Never try to work soil that is still saturated. You will destroy soil structure.

So, rake those garden beds, finish pruning fruit trees and shrubs, plant a tree or shrub, start a new compost pile, get a soil test and sharpen your hoe as we wait for planting season.

Pansies have appeared in the gardnen centers and are a great way to liven up a late winter/early spring landscape. They love the cold. Put them in a planter box with potting soil if native soil is too wet.

Spring has Sprung

2009-03-12T12:03:00.003-04:00

Ok, officially, Spring arrives on March 20 this year but I have observed several things that tell me it is already here.

Silver Maple is in full bloom. This isn’t a very showy bloom but it means a lot to honeybees who are looking for their first sips of nectar and loads of pollen. Red maples were not far behind. You can easily see the swollen, red buds on this common tree. These species bloomed even before Cornus mas, the Cornelian Cherry Dogwood, which is an early bloomer. In fact, I saw a stunning specimen of this tree on the edge of Morris Arboretum yesterday. Blazing yellow. Just drive a few miles south to Philly if you want to get a preview of what is in store for us in the northern suburbs.

The first summer annual weeds have germinated, too. Prostrate knotweed, which is one of the first to emerge has taken advantage of the micro-climate along the stone pathway leading to our office and has sprouted. By contrast, the winter annual weeds, which began growth last fall, are already beginning to bloom. Purple deadnettle, common chickweed and bittercress are flowering in warm, sheltered areas. These species will form seeds later this spring and then naturally die. The seed that they drop will wait patiently until fall when the cycle begins again. Ain’t Nature wonderful?

I am not much of a bird watcher so I’ll leave it to others to announce the bird signs of spring. I did happen along a lovesick wild turkey last week… dancing in the middle of a rural road.

Countdown to Seed Starting

2009-02-19T15:15:00.003-05:00

Although it is only February, folks are getting antsy about planting. I recently spoke to a person who had 50 lbs of seed potatoes scheduled for March delivery. When we had finished talking, that had changed to 25 lbs of spuds and a later delivery date.

This reminded me that lots of folks have questions about when to plant various crops. Part of the problem is that books often give a very wide range of dates or otherwise mislead readers. Books rarely get specific enough for local conditions.

So, where do we start? In Bucks County, the last spring frost usually occurs about mid May. Actually two key dates are useful. The median frost free date (50-50 chance of a frost) is about May 1 and the 90 % frost free date is about May 20, northern Bucks dates being later than southern Bucks. These dates are very useful when determining when to start transplants indoors.

Check out Penn State’s handy guide to seed starting for common veg crops. It details how long certain species should be grown indoors prior to transplanting and when they can be planted outside . Let’s take tomato as an example. If I am conservative and don’t want to risk frost injury, I’ll plan to set out plants on May 15. It takes tomato seed a week to germinate and I will grow it for 5 weeks before transplanting outside. So, working backwards six weeks (1 + 5) from May 15, I see that seeding tomato on April 1 will put me in the ballpark. If I am a bit of a risk taker, perhaps I’ll start them in late March and hope for a warming trend in early May. You get the idea.

Of course, some vegetable crops are seeded directly into the garden. Here you need to know their tolerance for cold. Peas tolerate cold well and can be direct seeded very early (late March/ early April)while plants in the squash family must wait until June.

There are other factors besides temperature involved. Some garden soil remains wet late into the spring. So, although those potatoes will tolerate cool soil… cool and wet soil can spell trouble. Waiting a week or two can be the difference between success and failure.

For a complete set of common vegetable crop fact sheets see this site. They contain information on planting dates as well as varieties, fertility, common pests, harvest suggestions and more.

Thanks to Kansas State University for the image of Broomcorn seed

Witchhazel blooms

2009-02-12T15:16:00.004-05:00

There’s nothing like a bit of bloom to remind us that spring is just around the corner. Today I noticed ‘Arnold Promise’ Witch-hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia) blooming in Doylestown. Its yellow petals are thin and strap-like; held in loose clusters.

There are several Witchhazel species used in landscaping but the most popular are these hybrids of Japanese and Chinese species. ‘Arnold Promise’ may be the most popular and it showed its colors on February 12 after we had a nice day of 60 + degrees.

This multi-stemmed shrub is a nice addition to almost any landscape and is adapted to a range of growing conditions. It will grow in full sun or partial shade and get to be about 12 feet high and wide with an upright growth habit. Its best characteristic is the early bloom but the summer foliage is a nice, medium green color and it is virtually pest free. The blooms even have a bit of fragrance.
There are other Witchhazel species. For the native plant lover, look for Common Witchhazel (Hamamelis virginiana). It’s the last plant to bloom, by my reckoning; usually in mid-November. It also has beautiful yellow, strap-like flowers. Sometimes they are obscured by the fall foliage but I usually get to see them lighting up the woods after leaf drop. This plant will get even larger than the hybrid described above and has a more horizontal growth habit. Seems to tolerate moist sites. Would be great in a naturalized border setting.

Next on my woody plant bloom list… Cornus mas. Maybe next month. Spring is coming.

PS image by Al Dolson

Wood ash... the wonder trash.

2009-01-30T11:59:00.004-05:00

There’s an old saying…"If you heat with wood it warms you twice. Once when you cut and split it and again when you burn it.” There is a final benefit to heating with wood if you are a gardener…. wood ash.

Wood ash is high in several plant nutrients, most notably potassium. Most references say that wood ash contains about 5 % potash… slang for potassium oxide, K2O in the fertilizer biz. That puts wood ash right up there with many conventional bagged fertilizers as far as nutrient content goes. It would be (is) a 0-0-5 fertilizer. No nitrogen or phosphorus but a nice slug of potassium.

Potassium is one of the “Big Three” or primary elements that plants need in order to grow and thrive. It is always listed in third place in the sequence of three numbers on a fertilizer bag.

There isn’t much “organic” about wood ash since all of the organic matter is burned off in your fireplace or wood stove. But most organic gardeners are more concerned about the natural part of stuff so wood ash is accepted. So everything is hunky-dory, right? Maybe.

First be sure that what you burned was wood, not stuff that might leave nasty remains. And that includes pressure treated wood, which until recently usually contained arsenic. Next, it is important to realize that wood ash is quite alkaline which means that it will increase soil pH (lower the acidity). It acts like a liming material. Still with me?

The practical matter is, while wood ash does contain essential nutrients, you can have too much of a good thing. If you have a big wood burner and a small garden you can drive soil pH into an extreme range and over apply potassium. Neither is good for plants. So how much should you apply? Depends on what you’re growing and the current status of your soil fertility. If you really want to know, get a Penn State Soil test. If you have to take a guess, don’t apply more than a pound or two of wood ash per 100 square feet until you get more information. If you just want to get rid of the dang stuff, sling it around the lawn. Wood ash is light and with the right technique you’ll be applying such small quantities that it will be hard to over apply it. Since wood ash is alkaline, avoid applications to areas where you are growing acid loving plants such as azaleas and blueberries.

Saving Seed

2009-01-22T15:47:00.002-05:00

There’s nothing like a cold winter day to get you thinking about spring. So last weekend when it was 2 below zero (still zone 6, see previous blog entry) I did a seed inventory. I was about to start filling out an order from my favorite catalog when I realized that I still had a lot of left-over seed. So I sorted and evaluated my stock. Wow! Do I ever have a lot of lettuce seed! Some of it from 2005.

The question is: will that seed still germinate? It depends on the species and the storage conditions. In the case of lettuce, my references say it is one of the best at remaining viable… maybe 5 years under good conditions. My left over onion seed from 2003 on the other hand, is mostly dead.

What are good storage conditions? In a nut shell, cool, dry and dark. About 40 degrees F and very low humidity. Temperatures in your fridge are fine; the enemy is moisture. Sealing dry seed in air tight jars with silica gel packets or another moisture absorbing material is best. Dry powdered milk might be handier for many of us than silca gel. Just put a couple of tablespoons in tissue paper, seal with rubber bands and add to your airtight seed storage jar.

Is that how I store my seeds? Sadly, not. They’ve just been in the garage… dry but subject to a range of temperatures and fluctuating humidity. So I’ll lower my expectations. Experience tells me that for most species, germination percentage may be down but enough of the seed is viable enough to warrant keeping it. Just sow a bit thicker than with fresh seed. If I had the time (or if the stakes were higher)I’d do a germination test by putting seed on moist paper towels at room temperature and recording the percentage that sprout. I probably won’t get around to that either.

Ok, here’s what the books say about seed longevity under good storage conditions. 1 year : onion, parsley, parsnip. 2 years: okra, pepper sweet corn. 3 years: bean, carrot, pea, broccoli, spinach. 4 years: beet, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, pumpkin, tomato. 5 years: collards, cukes, melons, lettuce, radish.

Note that what happens is that germination percentage declines over time. They don’t all die at once. And storage conditions have a big effect. One reference I read described seed of many vegetable species with germination rates over 50 % many decades after being put into ideal storage.

How Cold Was It?

2009-01-14T12:58:00.003-05:00

That’s a question that gardeners and farmers ask each other all of the time. The talk really heats up at several key times of the year: mid winter, when extreme low temperatures occur; late spring, when frosts can damage tender new growth and blooms; and again in the fall, when the first “killing freeze” signals the end of the growing season.

It is supposed to get a bit chilly later this week so I am sure there will be lots of conversation about the season’s lowest temperature, to date. The weather women (a major improvement over the weatherman) are talking about single digits on Thursday and Friday nights. Since most of Bucks County, PA is in USDA Hardiness Zone 6, that’s normal. In fact, if temperatures stay above minus 10 degrees F we are still within the normal average range for zone 6.

If you are not familiar with the concept of hardiness zones, click on the USDA link shown above and educate yourself. Zone designation is based on records of average low temperature that occurred from 1974-1986. The country is divided into 11 zones. The lower the number, the colder it gets.

Believe it or not, there is weather outside of the USA. I recall taking a stroll in Skibbereen, southern Ireland, a few years ago and admiring the Fuscia hedges. They were obviously hardy perennials there. This is Zone 9. The locals said it rarely went below freezing. The hardiness map says the average low temperature range is 20-30 degrees F. I note that my gardening pals in Nuremberg, Germany are zone 6, just like us. I would expect that the procedures I use for growing garlic would work there as well. Cold hardiness is a useful, international concept.

However, cold hardiness is only one important factor in plant growth. For instance, although the average low temperatures in southern Ireland look good for figs, I wonder if they get enough heat to ripen a crop. Rainfall, day-length and many other factors play a role in plant survival. I’m told that although Norway Maple is cold hardy in the southern states, it struggles under the high temperatures. Same thing with currents and gooseberries.

There isn’t much you can do about the weather but it’s important to consider winter hardiness when deciding what plants you are going to grow. Professional horticulturists and plant sellers use the USDA hardiness zones as an official and useful guide.

Of course, gardeners are always pushing the limits. I’ve got a fig tree and crape myrtle in my yard and they are both of these are zone 7 plants. I expect them to be severely injured by low temperatures now and then. Both have been killed to the ground. They re-grow from below ground parts that were not exposed to the killing temperature. Pushing the limits of hardiness zones is OK for the amateur but you’d be nuts to start a fig farm in zone 6.

Caring for your Cut Christmas Tree

2008-12-19T14:02:00.005-05:00

Christmas trees are a wonderful part of the holiday season. Although artificial tree have taken some of the market away from “real” trees, still, millions of homes display real trees each year. Got mine yesterday and I was reminded of several things….they aren’t that expensive, they’re easy to put up, your wife thinks it’s great that you did it and they smell and look wonderful. If you want some more reasons real trees are a good idea, see the folks at the National Christmas Tree Growers Association. Sure, it’s their product but the website makes some great points.

On to real tree care…. for some reason people want to make tree care more complicated than it needs to be. Penn State Christmas tree specialist Rick Bates dispels many myths in a handy fact sheet. In a nut shell, keep plain old water in the reservoir of the tree stand at all times and everything is OK. Both Penn State and the Christmas Tree Growers think the fire hazard from Christmas trees is way overblown. I recall a very unscientific study my graduate school advisor (and Christmas tree grower) and I did one year in January. We tried to ignite dried out, discarded Christmas trees with a lighter. No luck. I am sure someone has done a better job demonstrating how hard it is to make them burn.

How about tree disposal? Many townships will help you turn that tree into chips. Or do it yourself with a pair of loppers. It takes five minutes to turn your tree into mulch. Ours becomes a bird sanctuary and lawn ornament until late winter.

Holiday Shopping for Gardeners

2008-12-15T14:16:00.003-05:00

By some estimates, gardening is our nation’s number one hobby. I believe it. So, gardening gifts make a lot of sense. It helps to know your gardener… are they into flowers, vegetables, woody plants, container gardening? Do they have a special interest such as orchids, bonsai or fruit trees? Here are a few shopping hints.

I just took a quick look at the on-line gardening companies that I buy from. They all offer gift certificates. If you don’t know exactly what your gardening friend needs this ought to work. Rummage through the gardeners’ catalog pile at home (all gardeners have one) and you’ll know where to begin. Local nurseries and garden centers would be happy to have you business, too. No doubt you’ve been along on one of those trips and know where your friend shops.

Pruning is a common practice for all gardening. Pruning tools range from saws and loppers to tiny hand shears. Felco, is a Swiss company that sets the standard in this realm. I notice that they offer 16 different kinds of hand pruners. Wow.

If your gardening friend has everything he/she needs or you just want to do something a bit different, consider planting a tree in their honor. Local arboreta, townships and garden clubs can probably help you get that tree planted. Or try arborday.org.

Last but not least… Penn State Soil test kits make great stocking stuffers. They cost nine dollars and are available at any extension office. Or go to www.aasl.psu.edu to see how to do it on-line.

If a trees falls in the forest..

2008-12-05T11:01:00.001-05:00

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? I won’t get into that philosophical question but I recently spent a few days in a forest and had time to make some observations that made me think about tree mortality.

At Penn State Extension, we frequently get questions about why a particular tree has died or is dying. Sometimes we can attribute an insect or disease pathogen to the problem. However, almost all tree mortality is a complex situation involving environmental stresses as well as destructive organisms. Many people want a simple answer (and solution) about tree death but usually the story is more complex and does not have a simple diagnosis or treatment.
What struck me as I sat in the woods and observed trees was that there were a lot of dead and dying trees around me. Walk into any woods and look around. You’ll see the same thing…more or less. I don’t think this is unusual. It’s natural. Sure, there is explanation for most of it. I know that insect defoliation was involved in the death of some of the trees I was seeing. I know that competition for light was thinning out others. I could see lots of fungal pathogens. One species always seems to die at a relatively young age without apparent cause.

What does this mean? For me, it puts tree mortality in perspective. No one likes it when trees die and when important trees die, or die suddenly without explanation, we look for answers. Sometimes the diagnosis appears straight forward. For instance, hemlock wooly adelgid is the primary cause of hemlock mortality in the woods I was sitting in. And in this case, I think I was witnessing not only individual trees dying but perhaps the demise of our state tree as a species in Pennsylvania. More often, trees fail and exhibit a range of symptoms that lead to educated guesses about the cause. Most of the time that’s as far as our knowledge goes.
The suburban trees that we pamper and tend to in landscapes are subject all of the stresses as their wild forest relatives. It’s sad, but part of Nature’s way when they die.

Wrap that Fig

2008-11-25T14:42:00.003-05:00

Holidays are good reminders for certain garden activities…. In Bucks County we think of planting tomatoes about Mother’s Day, seeding new lawns on Labor Day, planting garlic on Columbus Day. To this list I’d add… wrap you fig on Thanksgiving.

What? You don’t have a fig tree? Well ask around. You’d be surprised how many Bucks County gardeners cultivate figs. These exotic, tasty fruit ripen in late summer and are a real treat. The plants are almost pest free and require very little care beyond a bit or pruning and winter protection. I joined the fig club a few years ago when a Bucks County Master Gardener gave me a root sucker to plant. I am not certain of the variety but it is probably Brown Turkey which is reported to be hardy to 10 degrees F.

Winter protection really starts with site selection. Place figs in a sunny protected area, preferably against a southern exposed building wall. This alone will go a long way towards improving winter survival of above ground canes. Although I mentioned fig tree, the plants growth habit is more like a multi-stemmed shrub. Fruit is borne on current seasons’ growth.

So, back to wrapping. Is it necessary? Maybe not. The person I got my plant from lives in central Bucks County and provides no protection. For insurance, consider tying all of the existing canes together in a bundle and wrapping them with burlap or any other sturdy cloth-like material and them re-wrapping with a more wind protective material. I’ve used the cheap tarps commonly sold in hardware stores. Some folks wrap loosely and fill the center with insulating material such as straw.It's a two person job.

Finally, mound soil over the crown of the plant. Even if the top growth freezes out, you’re likely to get re-growth from below ground if the crown is protected in this manner. Since fruit is born on current sesons growth you’ll still get a crop, although not as much as when old wood overwinters.

I discovered this the hard way on my first fig growing attempt. I assumed the worst after an unexpected, early December temperature plunge to single digits left my plant unprotected. After tilling the planted area in the spring, I discovered that there was life after all, below ground.

For a fact sheet on growing figs in northrern climates, check out what the folks from Cornell University on Long Island have to say at this site.

Pennsylvania Horticulture Society Recognizes Master Gardners Efforts

2008-11-17T14:53:00.003-05:00

An educational garden extraordinaire! This garden is the perfect location for a field trip for those anxious to learn about horticulture. There are displays of sun, shade, perennial, butterfly and pollinator gardens. So many varieties all beautifully labeled. Those well placed labels quickly resolved identification disputes. This Penn State Master Gardener Demonstration Garden provides a blast of color in an ocean of cold hard architecture.

That’s how the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society (PHS) described the gardens at Neshaminy Manor Center at the awards ceremony earlier this month at PHS headquarters in Philadelphia. We were one of about 75 gardens recognized in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey this year with the Community Greening Award. While Master Gardener coordinator Sue Schneck and I accepted the award, we both know that it is the hard work of dozens of volunteers who make it happen. The design, installation and management of these gardens is done by an outstanding crew of dedicated volunteers. Recently, we cleaned up dead summer foliage and planted pansies, so the gardens continue to look good. PHS folks must have missed it but our mini arboretum is part of our educational efforts and is functional all year long.
What is PHS? Just one of the oldest and most active horticulture societies in the U.S. Most folks know the Philadelphia Flower Show and sure enough, PHS puts on this popular event. But did you know that the proceeds from the Flower Show go to community greening efforts? Did you know that PHS has one of the finest horticultural libraries around? I spent an hour of so browsing the collection. Fantastic! They sponsor great lectures and other educational events. Check out PHS and consider becoming a member.

Household Invaders

2008-10-27T16:25:00.005-04:00

Sounds scary... household invaders. But we’re not talking about a break in....more like a sneak in and the culprits have six legs not two. About this time of year we get lots of calls about insects that make their way into homes. The biggest offenders are Boxelder Bugs and the Brown Marmorated Stinkbug.

Boxelder Bugs have been around a long time. In the past, when I talked to someone on the phone about them there was often one crawling around my office because the window I look out of does not seal real well. The bugs made their way in through the tiny crevices. Since recent construction has removed the near-by box elder trees that were their summer host, I haven't seen them. Boxelder bugs feed on boxelder trees, as well as other maples (boxelder is Acer negundo, the same genus as maple) and ash. In the fall they look for a cozy warm place to spend the winter, starting out on the sunny sides of building and moving inside if given a chance. They must have good heat sensors.
These red and black bugs do not do any damage to homes. In fact they don’t do much damage to plants either although they do suck sap from leaves and seeds of boxelder. If anyone cared about this plant it might be an issue but boxelder trees are usually considered a weedy tree.

Most folks don’t appreciate big insects crawling around the house and bug phobic people get real agitated. The solution to boxelder invasion is to seal up the cracks and crevices they use to get in. Once inside, simply sweep or vacuum them up. They do not reproduce inside. If you make direct hit with an insecticide you will kill them but the vacuum cleaner or shop-vac is quicker. I suppose you could consider insecticide applications outside where they congregate but even here, think twice before spraying. First, if they can’t get in the house, what’s the problem? And given the poor control provided by insecticides and the ease of the vacuum, why not keep things simple. If you can find the host boxelder tree and remove it you will have a big impact in future years.

The Brown Marmorated Stinkbug
is a recent phenomenon. Actually, one of Penn State’s extension educators in Lehigh county helped to document the first sightings in 1998. It is native to China.
This bug can cause plant damage. It feeds on several fruit species. But the problem most folks have with them is when they get inside. They fly, they stink a bit when crushed and are creepy in a bug-like way to most folks.
The control measures for the stinkbug is the same as for boxelder bugs. Seal cracks and crevices to prevent entry. Vacuum up those that get in. Realize that they do no structural damage of any kind and do not breed inside.
Some folks think these home invaders are reproducing inside because they see additional bugs after the initial removal. The insects are simply emerging from hiding places. Well, maybe not hiding but previously infested areas. It seems to me that a common entry point for stink bugs is attic areas which are often hard to seal completely.

First Frost

2008-10-21T14:20:00.002-04:00

The “official” median date for the first frost in Bucks County is October 6. That means that about half of the time we will have received temperatures below 32 degrees before this date and half of the time it will be later. My unofficial observations over the last 25 year tells me that by Columbus Day we have usually had a light frost and a real “killing frost” comes later the month.
Mother Nature is right on schedule. My garden was nipped over the weekend but got the killer on Monday night when the minimum/maximum thermometer read 24 degrees. I anticipated the demise of my zucchini and peppers and harvested the last of these on Saturday.

Of course, this does not mean the end of the gardening season. Lettuce, cole crops, and even carrots stand up well to these temperatures and keep on growing. Growth is slowed but in the case of the lettuces and cole crops this simply means that they will hold very nicely in the garden. Their growth is so slow that it’s kind of like and extension of your fridge. I plan to harvest lettuce right up until Thanksgiving. I’ve had lettuce at Christmas.

It is too late to plant much of anything except garlic. But if you have not enjoyed the pleasure of a fall garden, try to remember to keep planting in August and September 2009.

Finally, if you have not used floating row covers to extend your gardening season in early spring and late fall, check them out. They can provide a few degrees of frost protection and trap daytime heat to boost growth in cool temperatures. Most gardening catalogs sell them.

Garlic Planting Time

2008-10-17T11:29:00.003-04:00

Columbus Day is a good reminder to plant garlic. What you plant now will be ready to harvest on the fourth of July, 2009. Why plant garlic? Several reasons… it is easy to grow, homegrown quality is better than store bought, and the satisfaction of producing really high quality garlic is hard to beat. Tulips and daffodils aren’t the only fall bulbs to be planting this weekend. Don’t forget the garlic.

Penn State’s on-line garlic fact sheet seems to be in revision or hiding somewhere on the web so I’ll outline some garlic planting basics. First, get the right planting stock. DO NOT plant store bought stuff. If you can find a local grower, that is best. While poking around on line looking for our fact sheet, I found several Pennsylvania producers who will sell to you. I’ve been buying from Johnny’s Select Seeds in Maine for years and they still offer a nice lineup of varieties adapted to the Northeast US. If you go to a local Farmers Market, chat with the garlic sellers. If they grew it, it is obviously well adapted to your area. Many growers are partial to the hardneck types, which have excellent flavor. My garlic buddy sent me a variety called Music that is getting lots of acclaim. I currently have Russian and German Red as well as New York White. I like them all. Right now my garage is decorated with bunches of heads, hanging from the rafters. It is a beautiful sight and a reassuring feeling to know that I have a winter’s supply.

The planting details…you’ll plant individual garlic cloves about 1.5 inches deep in rich, well-drained garden soil in October. Space about 6 to 8 inches apart. A few leaves will sprout this fall. After we’ve had several hard freezes, it is a good idea to mulch the garlic bed with straw or leaves to lock in that cold. This prevents “heaving” that can occur as winter temps fluctuate. Not too deep, just a couple inches of fluffy organic matter. Next spring, the garlic will grow thru the mulch. A shot of nitrogen rich fertilizer in April is helpful and then you simply wait for the bulbs to size up. When about one half of the lower leaves have died, it’s time to harvest.

Dan the Chicken Man and His Garden

2008-10-14T14:56:00.008-04:00

Last weekend I visited gardening friend, Graham Bell (see previous blog, “Graham’s Garden Inspirations”) in Rhode Island. Our primary mission was to assist his friend, Dan, in the task of processing (killing and cleaning) 85 chickens. It’s kind of a communal thing. Dan raises the chickens. Friends pay a share of the feed costs and get a share of the meat in return. Shareholders pitch in on Chicken Day in October when the birds are ready to harvest. Oddballs like me and my wife go just for the fun of it. So, in four hours about ten of us killed, plucked, dressed (gutted) and bagged the birds.

Since this is a gardening blog, I’ll spare you the details of chicken processing. So here is the gardening part. Chicken Man Dan is also a very good gardener. I sensed this as I wheel barrowed chicken feathers and blood soaked leaves (nitrogen rich) to his compost pile. Dan told me that he’ll add a layer of apple pomace from a cider maker and by next spring he’ll have some killer compost. He adds lots of tree leaves as a carbon source. You read about the value of feathers and blood as compost ingredients but rarely see it. Not many folks are killing their own chickens these days.

I took a detour on the way back from dumping blood and feathers to check out Dan’s garden. I saw fall red raspberries, tomato trellis, raised beds, etc. That’s when I saw the large mail box in the middle of his garden and knew I had found the solution to the maddening task of storing garden tools and other stuff in a handy place. Dan’s big old mail box
holds all of those tools you often need but don’t remember to carry…. lettuce harvesting knives, dibbles, tying materials, labels, etc. Next to the mail box was a box of spoons… flattened to make nifty row-markers. More durable than wood…or even plastic..

Once again, great gardening ideas from afar. It pays to get out of your own backyard once in a while.

Giant Skeeters... Actually Crane Flies

2008-10-06T14:31:00.002-04:00

Lots of calls are coming into the Bucks County Extension office about giant mosquitoes. Turns out, what everyone is looking at are Crane Flies. It’s easy to see how they might be confused. These bugs are long-legged and slender-bodied… like the biting bug that everyone is worried about. Crane flies don’t bite. And they are a lot bigger than most mosquitoes. Right now they are sipping a bit of nectar from fall flowers and mating.. a nice life, but a short one. They live about 10-15 days before laying eggs. Their larvae feed on decaying organic matter, improving habitat for other creatures and getting gobbled up by frogs, fish and other predators. So it turns out that crane flies are good guys.

If you get poking around on-line you may learn that there are a couple of crane fly species (out of about 1500 in North America) that damage lawns. This is mostly confined to the Pacific Northwest. I did see an unusual case of crane fly larvae damage to a lawn a few years ago but that lawn was already severely damaged by other pests. The crane flies were mostly on clean up duty, decomposing the dead turf.
So don’t sweat the long legged, mosquito imposters, even if you see dozens or hundreds on the side of the house on a cool fall evening.

Believe it or not, I found a website called Crane Flies of Pennsylvania on-line and if you need to read more, check it out. I leaned that there are at least 300 species in Pennsylvania and about 10 in Bucks County. Looks like Philadelphia county wins the prize with more than 100 species accounted for.

Fall Flowers

2008-09-24T11:31:00.003-04:00

Spring flowers are a nice thing. Maybe seeing bright colors after a drab winter is the reason that spring flowers are so memorable. But right now I am enjoying fall flowers…. Goldenrods (Solidago), Asters (Aster) White-snakeroot (Eupatorium rugosum) and Beggar-ticks (Bidens) are just a few of the beauties that are blooming now. September is a good time to appreciate them. Fall leaf color is not competing for our attention yet.

I had to get out my plant references to identify the White-snakeroot that is blooming (white) along the 611 bypass near Danboro. It wasn’t in “Weeds of the Northeast” so I went to “The Plants of Pennsylvania”. I like “Weeds of the Northeast” because it lists several hundred common weedy plants and has lots of color pictures. “The Plants of Pennsylvania” doesn’t have color pictures but lists several thousand species! It helps to have a rough idea of what you’re looking for when consulting it. So, as I was researching the White-snake root I learned that there are 18 Euparoriums, 45 Asters and 26 Solidagos in Pennsylvania.

Besides the colorful show that fall blooms provide, many of them provide forage for insects, including honey bees. If you are near a bee hive in September, the fragrance of goldenrod and aster nectar is unmistakable.
If you enjoy identifying local flora, the two books I mentioned are excellent references. You can find both of them at on-line book sellers.

Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve in Washington Crossing, PA is offering guided wildflower walks this fall, daily at 2 p.m. for a small fee. A great way to learn the names of more fall bloomers.

Powdery Mildew Appears

2008-09-16T15:48:00.003-04:00

What’s that white stuff on my…. you name it….zinnias, lilac, pumpkin, dogwood. It’s powdery mildew, a common fungal disease that appears in late summer every year. Yes, it is a disease but there is no need for alarm. In most cases, it’s just cosmetic.
Actually, there are many different, related fungi that cause symptoms that we call powdery mildew. While related, in most cases they are specific to their host plants. For instance the powdery mildew on apple is not that same as the organism that affects lilac.

Commercial growers of pumpkin, apples, peaches and some other crops must manage powdery mildew or serious crop damage can occur. In backyard gardens, we can usually accept this damage caused by the disease. All deciduous plant leaves are due to drop in the next month so, powdery mildew or not their days are numbered.
Bottom line, don’t worry about powdery mildew. For a more complete story on this common disease see what Cornell University has to say.

Don’t worry about putting mildew infected leaves into the compost. Next year’s infections will come from many sources and the fungus will probably have trouble surviving the compost pile environment anyway.

Budworms ate my blossoms

2008-09-10T15:30:00.003-04:00

Penn State Master Gardeners have established several fantastic demonstration gardens at Neshaminy Manor Center, where our Extension office is located. We recently received the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society “Community Greening Award”.

But there is trouble in paradise. The tobacco budworm has eaten virtually every blossom and flower bud from our petunias! Purple ones, white ones, pink ones. We knew what was up because this is a recurring problem. Initially, we thought that the petunias simply stopped blooming but on closer inspection it was easy to see the chewing damage. Once we caught one of the caterpillars it was easy to solve the mystery.

Several weeks ago we applied Bt, (Bacillus thuringiensis) a biological insecticide, and that did the job. We must be into the next generation of budworms now because the color is again gone from our petunia beds. The Bt treatment only lasts a short time.
So, if your petunias (or geraniums or tobacco)seem to have mysteriously stopped blooming, check the flower buds for ragged, chewing feeding symptoms. The insects themselves are elusive, feeding at night and hiding during the day. A shot of Bt did the trick for us. Other insecticides will work but Bt is quite selective for caterpillars and so that is a good choice.

Thanks, Mother Nature

2008-09-09T11:46:00.001-04:00

Ah rain. Until Hanna delivered a few inches last weekend, we were in a drought. What’s a drought ? The National Weather Service says an agricultural drought refers to a situation where the amount of moisture in the soil no longer meets the needs of a particular crop.

The effects of drought on annual garden plants such as vegetable and flower gardens are obvious. Certainly the needs of these plants were not met as August yielded less than an inch of rainfall in most of Bucks County….less than half and inch in my neighborhood. But what concerns me more is the long term effect of drought on perennial plants, especially trees. For the last two weeks I’ve observed severe stress symptoms on many trees and shrubs. They will revive and survive but in many cases this stress will lead to disease and failure in years to come. Penn State’s plant disease clinic receives many plant samples each year and has correlated the incidence of drought and certain diseases of woody plants, especially botryosphaeria canker on rhododendron, dogwood, redbud and crabapple and cytospora canker on spruce. These diseases lead to severe branch cankering and dieback.
During the drought of 1999, which was extreme, I observed stress on many woody plants that lead to plant decline and death in the years that followed. Here at Neshaminy Manor Center, home of the Almshouse Arboretum, we watered trees that were planted in 2007 and 2008 to insure that they will thrive in years to come.

Fall is for planting

2008-08-29T09:00:00.001-04:00

Everyone thinks of Spring planting but what about Fall? Just about everything you plant in the spring can also be fall planted. And many of our favorite plants must be established in the fall. Think bulbs… and not just the pretty ones, garlic, too.
The reason that fall is such a great planting season is that the soil is warm and we have a very long growing season from September until about Thanksgiving. Think about that… 90 days of growing weather. True, many plants aren’t pproducing much shoot growth. But the roots of many plants continue to function long after shoots appear dormant. Sure, we’ll have a frost in mid-October but most years this is followed by many days of frost free temperatures.
So, thinking about a tree or shrub for the backyard? Now is a great time to get to the garden center and look over the inventory. Many places offer good deal at the end of the season. Pick plants carefully and be sure they have been well cared for during the summer season. Plant as soon as possible, water well and mulch to get them off to a good start. Certain species are known to be difficult to transplant and probable should not be fall planted. Some oaks, magnolias, Stewartia, sweetgum, crape myrtle, hawthorn and hornbeams are best planted in the spring.
When it comes to lawns, fall is the best season for renovation and establishment. Warm soil, cool nights and reduced weed pressure all add up to success. Even lawn maintenance practices such as liming, fertilization and weed control have more bang for the buck when done in the fall.
How about those bulbs? An afternoon spent in October planting bulbs pays big dividends in the spring. Want to see those impressive displays of color like you see in formal gardens and landscapes? Buy bulbs by the hundreds rather than the dozen and your landscape will shine. On-line or catalog prices on these quantities are really attractive. Get together with the neighbors and make a big purchase.
Finally, my favorite…. Garlic. Maybe it’s not the prettiest plant in the garden but this vegetable is easy to grow, stores well and has better quality when home grown than you can buy at the supermarket. Find a garlic supplier in the Northeast U.S and plan to have the bulbs delivered in October. Plant about Columbus Day or even a little later in rich garden soil. You’ll be rewarded about the 4th of July next year.
Fall is for planting. Get to work!

Japanese Stiltgrass

2008-08-28T13:02:00.001-04:00

If you drive along the shady, back-roads of Bucks County you’ve seen Japanese stiltgrass. It is the green grass growing on the road sides. While it provides a pretty fringe to the roadway, this is a nasty invasive plant. One of my early encounters with it was when a naturalist at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve called about 20 years ago to ask me what could be done to control it. It was crowding out the dainty wild flowers.
Japanese Stilitgrass, Microstegium vimineum, is a summer annual grass that is native to Asia and was probably introduced to the U.S in the early 1900’s. It germinates in early spring and dies each fall when we have a killing frost, surviving only as seed.
Stiltgrass has a lot in common with crabgrass. Same life cycle. In fact, most of the controls used for crabgrass, chemical and non-chemical, work for stiltgrass. Stilt grass appears to be much more shade tolerant than crabgrass which is why it creeps in corm those shady areas and into garden beds and lawns.
Establishing dense, competitive turf is the answer where stiltgrass threatens lawns. . Use a shade tolerant grass species such as fine fescue in shady areas and fertilize to keep it dense. Apply a pre-emerge crabgrass control product in early April to prevent stilt grass germination. In landscape beds, preemerge herbicides will do the trick or you can simply pull and mow it all season.
Unfortunately, in unmanaged areas it will continue to dominate those fringe spaces, crowding out other plants.

Bagworms "Appear"

2008-08-18T14:27:00.005-04:00

Yes, it may seem that this bug just appeared but bagworms have been feeding since early June. Most folks don’t notice bagworms until they have devoured most of the foliage of their favorite host plants such as arborvitae and juniper. Bagworms seem to prefer conifers but they are known to feed on more than 125 different plant species including sycamore, honeylocust and elm. Bagworms can be deadly to some plants. Evergreens that are defoliated do not recover. Deciduous plants can tolerate the feeding much better.
It is important to realize that the treatment time for this insect has passed. You may have the urge for revenge… but hold off. You can get ‘em next year when they are vulnerable.

Here’s a quick review of the bagworm life cycle. Right now they are mature larvae (caterpillar form) encased in a cocoon-like “bag” made up of parts of the plant they are feeding on. Soon, they will stop feeding and pass into a resting stage (pupae). Later this summer the moth-like adults emerge. Actually, only the males leave the bag. Females lure in the males, mate and then die, leaving 500-1000 eggs to overwinter. So, some bags that you see from September through Spring are empty. These are remnants of male bagworms. Some contain eggs… remains of the female insects.

About Memorial Day, 2009, we can expect the little buggers to hatch. They begin feeding in June but go un-noticed by most folks as they blend into the background of the plants they are feeding on. But this is the time to drop the hammer on them. By mid -June most of the eggs should have hatched and small larvae are feeding. The biological insecticide called Bt can be effective if your timing and spray coverage is good. Conventional insecticides such as carbaryl (Sevin) and synthetic pyrethrins are also effective. So, if you have signs of bagworm feeding, mark your 2009 calendar for Flag Day and plan to treat then.
What? You want to pick off all of the bags. OK. Have fun. But don’t call me if you off the ladder. Seriously, hand picking is OK but your chances of getting them all are slim. There is some gratification in hand picking but it ain’t worth breaking a leg.

PS Photo by Sarah Pickel, PA Department of Agriculture. Look closely and you can see the pupal case protruding from the open end of the bag.

Your lawn has never looked worse

2008-08-08T11:41:00.004-04:00

Your lawn has never looked worse… and you can consider that a complement. What I mean is that your lawn may look a bit ragged about now, but that is normal. Most of the grass species we use for lawns, such as Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass and the fescues are “cool season” grasses. They thrive under cool moist conditions and go dormant or are very stressed under hot temperatures and drought stress. So your expectations should be low in mid August. That lawn has been struggling for months. OK, those of you with irrigation systems can expect more green but most of us aren't in that boat.

But as day length shortens, temperatures moderate and rains replenish soil moisture… lawns ought to perk up. September is a great time to re-seed patches of turf that just couldn't take the stresses of summer. Plan now for reseeding. If you have large areas that have petered out, consider hiring help or renting a slit-seeder to re-seed. Soil-seed contact is essential. If you simply toss seed onto the bare areas you are just feeding the birds. If you have very small areas to re-seed, scratch them up with a stiff rake before seeding. Firm the seed bed after seeding.

Whether you are re-seeding or not, September is an important month to fertilize. An application of 10 pounds of 10-6-4 fertilizer per 1000 square feet, or its equivalent from other nitrogen sources, is a very good way to encourage growth that will repair summer’s damages.

Other fall lawn care includes liming and broadleaf weed control. Stay tuned for more on that subject. For tips on renovating a really lousy lawn, check out this Penn State resource.

Zukes Croak... Squash Vine Borer

2008-08-05T16:11:00.002-04:00

Help! My zucchini are dead!

Many people will tell you that zucchini are a fool proof crop but not so for me. Each year, squash vine borers kill my zukes in early August. This insect bores through the stems and wrecks the plants plumbing, resulting in wilted and then dead plants. Squash vine borer problems are easy to diagnose. The stems, at ground level, are an unsightly mess of chewed plant bits. Yellow frass (caterpillar crap) often oozes from wounds. Dig around in the stems and you’ll find a nice fat larvae, eating the stems from the inside out. Plants wilt because the water conducting tissue of the plant is destroyed.
Plants will limp along, partially damaged for a long time, but they eventually wilt and die. No more zukes. By this time maybe you’ve had enough squash or your perhaps neighbor’s crop is just coming on.
What can be done?. I haven’t tried the frequently describe method of slitting open the zuke stems and stabbing the squash vine borer larvae with a wire. Done early enough this might work. A sure-fire method is to apply an insecticide at the base of the plant stems where female squash vine borers lay their eggs. Most over the counter vegetable insecticides will do the job. Apply in late June and early July and you should kill the larvae that hatch from recently laid eggs. Note that the entire plant does not need to be treated, just the stem, where it enters the soil.
It’s too late for insecticide treatments this year. So, make a note in your garden journal and prepare for 2009. Check out Penn State’s football rival, Ohio State, for a very thorough description of this pest and all of the control options.

Fall webworm

2008-07-31T11:52:00.002-04:00

Looked at walnut trees lately? The one’s I’m observing have large white webs at the ends of their branches. This is a common sign of an insect called fall web worm that begins feeding about this time of year. By late summer these webby nests will engulf large portion of the limbs. It’s unsightly but not a big deal because they feed so late in the season that the trees have already stored lots of energy to sustain themselves. So, the webbing is ugly but not cause for alarm. I see them in wild cherry trees, too. Sassafras, persimmon, sweetgum and about 200 other deciduous tree species are host plants for this insect.
Inside the nests you’ll find pale yellow, hairy caterpillars with black dots on the back. When disturbed they may begin to jerk around rhythmically in a defensive posture. Pretty cool. Many parasites and predators keep the population in check… in the long run.
If you can’t stand the look of them, you can simply cut of the offending branch. But most of the time it’s way up in the canopy of the tree, beyond reach. Insecticides will kill them but pruning is a more selective, reasonable choice if you have to do something. And remember that this is mostly a cosmetic problem, not a tree health problem.

Tomato Troubles

2008-07-24T11:09:00.004-04:00

Most gardeners are starting to harvest tomatoes by now. Some have been at it for a month. So, here at the Penn State Extension office, calls about tomato trouble are starting to come in. Want to see gory pictures of tomato problems? Check out Penn State and our sister institution Texas A& M for some exquisite shots.

This week I saw the following:
Early blight, the most common fungal disease of tomato. It causes lower leaves to turn yellow then brown. On closer examination you’ll see brown spots with concentric rings of dead tissue. Later, tomato fruit will develop rotten spots. Staking plants to improve air circulation and quick drying is an important control measure. Fungicides work very well but most gardeners are not interested in spraying plants and despite the infection, plants usually produce a decent crop… for a few weeks. The fungicide chlorothalonil is effective in preventing the disease spread and is available over the counter in garden centers. Organic gardeners can use copper fungicides and get limited control.
My strategy: 1) Stake ‘em up early and often 2) have a second planting coming on and abandon the first when the disease overwhelms them in late August. Go ahead and compost that old stuff.

Blossom end rot causes a dry, leathery, brown rot on the blossom end (opposite the stem end) of fruit. Caused by calcium deficiency. Hard to fix now. Soil test and add needed calcium with lime or gypsum in the fall to boost Ca levels for next year. A Penn State Soil test will tell you how much. Sometimes blossom end rot shows up in gardens with adequate calcium. Anything that prevents the plant from absorbing calcium from the soil, such as moisture extremes or root damage can result in blossom end rot. Sometimes plants have affected fruit for a while and then snap out of it.

Viral diseases mimic herbicide injury. Saw several cases last week. My guess is cucumber mosaic virus but that is just an educated guess. Viral diseases cause weird plant distortion and mottled, mosaic patterns (several shades of color) on fol age and fruit. Fruit are often undersized and misshapen. Viral diseases are a tough case because there is no cure. The virus lives in other plants, often hundreds of species, including ornamentals and weeds and is transmitted by insects such as aphids and leaf hoppers. They can even be transmitted by human handling of infected plants. You may see viral symptoms on beans and vine crops also. I do not know why virus diseases are devastating one year and almost non-existent in another. This is looking like a good year for viral diseases.

By the way, none of these problems make the tomatoes inedible, just cut out the affected parts and chow down. And another thing….aren’t you glad that your paycheck isn’t dependant on your horticultural skills and Mother Nature. That’s the high risk game farmers are in.

Plan now for fall harvest

2008-07-23T11:51:00.003-04:00

By now many vegetable gardens have gaps… places where early season crops such as lettuce, peas, beets and other quick maturing crops have come and gone. If you like the idea of broccoli on Columbus Day, cauliflower at Thanksgiving and home grown carrots at Christmas you’ll need to make preparations now. Hey, maybe you are a slow starter and are just now getting around to breaking garden ground. In any event, there is plenty of growing season left in 2008.
Many of our favorite vegetables are cool or cold tolerant. Frost and even a hard freeze are not a problem. It’s true that growth slows during cool, short days of fall, but if those plants have had a good head start you will be rewarded.

So, take a look at your seed inventory, visit garden centers or jump on-line for seeds of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, leafy greens and other cool tolerant crops. Then get those garden areas worked up, fertilized and seeded. You will also see transplants of the cabbage family crops showing up in better garden centers about now. Obviously, with transplants you can start later…into mid August.

One of the beauties of fall gardens is that crops “hold” well. Broccoli heading in June has a short life. Broccoli heading in October will hold tight for a long time. Same with cauliflower. Brussels sprouts anyone? The root crops (beets carrots) are also great fall vegetables. Leave those carrots in the ground after the tops die down and much with straw. Then go digging at Christmas and see what you’ve got. They make great stocking stuffers.

Maybe I’m nuts to be thinking about fall frost when it is 98 degrees but let’s see who’s laughing in October when the harvest is on. For a Penn State has a great fact sheet on growing leafy greens. Check it out.

Wineberry... friend or foe?

2008-07-17T11:15:00.007-04:00

One of Buck Shorts devoted readers commented recently about wineberry, Rubus phoenicolasius. Quite a coincidence since I had nibbled on it a few just hours before. We’ll, maybe not so much of a coincidence because this wild bramble is bearing lots of fruit right now and many folks enjoy it.

Wine berry looks a lot like other brambles such as red and black raspberry except that it is covered with sticky red hairs and bristles rather than sharp prickles. The fruit are a bit smaller than other brambles but they are very tasty and distinctly “wine colored”. I know wine comes in many colors so let’s call wineberries a deep rosé. They are bearing now, after red and black raspberries but before the blackberries.

One of the nice things about wineberries is that they grow wild and if you know where to look you can just graze on them every year. No gardening necessary. A few popped up in my yard last year (deposited by seeds in bird droppings, no doubt) and I let them grow. Like most brambles, the canes are biennial. Year one, canes are vegetative; year two they bear fruit and then die. Besides the nice fruit, they are kind of pretty, too.

I did a quick internet search on this plant and learned that it is not native and is considered invasive in many states. It was introduced as breeding stock and is native to China, Japan and Korea. Wineberry is on Massachusetts’s and Connecticut’s noxious weed list. Many sites describe its invasive nature and I believe that it is capable of displacing native vegetation. So, in some states at least, if you cultivate Rubus phoenicolasius you are breaking the law. The weed police will not bother you in Pennsylvania, so pick away. You can even say you are doing your part to prevent its spread if you beat the birds to the seedy fruit. In any event, you only have another week or so if you want to enjoy the wineberry crop. Take a walk in the woods and you may find some.

Want to learn how to grow your own brambles? Check out Penn State's guide to growing fruit in the backyard. It has an entire chapter on brambles.

Hey Kathleen, thanks for the photo of Rubus phoenicolasius. Love the images on your photoblog. And Buck Short says thanks for his new image posted on this site.

Penn State College of Ag Sciences… more than you think!

2008-07-15T11:28:00.002-04:00

OK, I’ll admit up front that I am a bit biased because I work for Penn State but I think you will agree that there is more to the Penn State ‘s College of Ag Sciences than you thought… after you take a closer look.

You can take a 200 mile drive west and visit the place. But many of you will find it easier to just check out the web-based resources at www.cas.psu.edu. You won’t be able to smell the manure, see the flowers, or hear the roar of the Nittany Lion from your desktop but it is still pretty impressive.

The welcome page at the College’s site highlights some current activities. Did you know there was a natural gas rush going on in parts of Pennsylvania? Penn State is playing a role in protecting landowners from being rushed into a poor decision. Are you really into Agriculture? Learn more about Penn State annual Ag Progress Days which will be held in late August. Agricultural research is showcased at this event.

One of the best features of the site is the search box that allows you to mine the depths of the College’s resources. Just for fun I typed in “tomato’ and found fact sheets on growing, canning and staking tomatoes. I also found nice color pictures of tomato diseases. I’ll be talking to you about early blight soon. Stay tuned. Back at the home page I see that Penn State is helping farmers in Nepal manage tomato and eggplant disease.

Next I typed in the word “pond” and found Penn State’s pond website. Besides all of the nice publications and pictures, I learned that an on-line pond management course will be offered this fall. Wow! Penn State Ag Sciences… more than you think!

Watch Your Ash

2008-07-10T11:36:00.007-04:00

The other day I found myself taking a cross country walk through suburban Doylestown Township. From Cross Keys to Delaware Valley College, if you know the territory. I was trying to stay out of the sun so I stuck to the side streets, looking for shade. I found a lot of shade but as I proceeded though one particular development I noticed something disturbing. Almost every tree I walked under was ash. Green Ash is a great tree -tough as nails and well adapted to our region. Not much for flowers or fruit but it's a good choice for shade. Or it was.

As you may have heard, there's a new pest in Pennsylvania called Emerald Ash Borer. Just about one year ago the pest was found on the western Pennsylvania border. It traveled east from Ohio. The original infestation in the United States was found in Michigan in 2002 where it has devastated more than 30 million ash trees. Who knows how long it will take for this boring beetle to reach our end of the state but experts agree, it is just a matter of time. The larval stage of this insect destroys the water and nutrient conducting tissue just beneath the bark, causing trees to die. Symptoms include back cracking, woodpecker activity, crown die-back, and ultimately , tree death. Several other borers attach ash. Check symptoms to distinguish between them.

So, as I enjoyed the shade of these fine trees I could not help but think that some day they are likely to be wiped out by a new invasive pest. Forget about eradication. This cat is out of the bag. Individual ash trees will be candidates for insecticide treatment but wholesale protection of woodland trees and most landscape trees is just not feasible. Don't panic now and call the arborist. We'll have more specific instructions when it finally gets here. No sense in treating trees before the bug is here.

For now, enjoy the shade. Think twice before planting ash (we're talking the genus Fraxinus not mountain ash, Sorbus). Be glad that Pennsylvania has only a modest amount of ash in it's forests and landscapes. It may be many years before eastern Pennsylvania deals with this pest. Regulatory agencies are monitoring throughout Pennsylvania to track it's progress. If you happen to see a big purple box hanging in an ash tree, this is one of the monitoring stations.

Click on the Emerald Ash Borer link above to get the full story. You can follow the progress of this insect and read it's history from this site. And watch your ash.

The Beetles Reunite for 2008 Performance

2008-07-03T10:16:00.005-04:00

Back by unpopular demand for the 92nd year... The Beetles (Japanese Beetles)! Performances began the last week in June and are scheduled throughout the region for the next 30-45 days. Their tune has not changed much. Expect them to be playing Skeletonizing Zinnia, Happiness is a Warm Raspberry, Lovely Rosebush, Grape Leaf Surprise and others among their repertoire of 300 favorites.

By early August, the aging group's offspring, calling themselves The Grubs, are expected to go underground. The new generation will perform, as usual, on (actually under) lawns. They prefer well irrigated turf and usually are a bust if dry weather prevails during late summer. So, if this group's act is not for you, allowing lawns to remain dry is a good way to reduce their presence.

Certain homeowners have taken preventative measures against both the adult and expected juvenile stages of The Beetles by calling The Police who applied very effective chemical controls in the form of imidacloprid to trees, shrubs and lawns. It's too late for this treatment on woody plants but lawns can be treated through the month of July if many Beetle performances occur in your area. Be sure the treatment is watered-in after application.

On thing I've noticed is that once performances begin, they tend to keep playing in the same site for a long time. So eradicating Beetle infestations early is important. Trapping beetles is easy but ineffective. They can fly. A popular control measure used on the The Grubs, called Milky Spore Disease has not proven effective in research studies, according to many Beetle experts. Old timers are known to apply The Hand Jive to control beetles. Catch them napping early in the morning and knock them into a can of soapy or oily water.

Successful tours the past two years may be catching up on the Beetles. Rival groups, including The Wasps, The Flies and even the Birds and The Toads are taking their toll on The Beetle's success.

Graham's Garden Inspirations

2008-06-30T10:40:00.012-04:00

Sometimes you have to get out of your own back yard to get new gardening ideas. Every year I visit my good friend and gardener extraordinaire, Graham (Crackers) Bell for inspiration. I got started with raised beds years ago after seeing his. He showed me how easy it is to grow garlic. He has made me a passionate advocate for composted sheep manure. So, when I make my annual visit to his Rhode Island garden, I expect to see something new and useful.

This year it was the tomato support systems. One nifty trick was planting the tomatoes near a fence and then snaking soft twine around the stems as they grow. Tie off the other end to a fence. The other was a two-tiered, heavy gauge, wire combo that the plants grow through (just double click on these images for a detailed look). Both beat the stake and twine system I use. I guess what really matters is getting the plants off of the ground. If you aren't staking your tomatoes give it a try. Yes, you can buy cages and pre-made made systems. But as you can see, devising your own can be just as good. One of the benefits of staking is improved air/light circulation around plants which leads to reduced disease. Also, tomato fruit are lifted off the ground which lessens slug damage and soil borne disease contamination.

Recently, I blogged on and on about raised beds. Check out Graham's rock-raised beds and that beautiful garlic. Well, those are a few of the gardening highlights from my pilgrimage to garden Guru Graham. Next year I hope to master his technique with the martini shaker and find out how to grow borage.

P.S. On my return to Pennsylvania I found Japanese Beetles feasting on my Zinnias and red raspberries. More later on beetle management but if you are seeing beetles on you plants, act now before they invite friends to their dinner party.

Growing Great Garlic

2008-06-25T15:35:00.003-04:00

Growing Great Garlic is the title of a book I keep by my bed. Maybe it keeps the vampires away if I haven’t had my daily dose of garlic. It’s a great book but you probably don’t need to buy it. Garlic is real easy to grow and Penn State has a nice pamphlet on growing bulb crops such as onion, leek and garlic that tells you what you need to know… unless you are planning to go into the garlic business or become so enthused about garlic that you just need more information. Then you may want the book.

Garlic is on my mind now because as we approach the 4th of July I know that garlic harvest time is near. Usually by the 4th the leaves on the bottom half of the plants have died and turned brown. This is a sign that the bulb is near optimum maturity. Harvested too soon, the cloves are not well defined and full-sized. Harvested too late and the cloves separate…quality and storage life decline.

Ok, I’m about to harvest but how did I get to this point? Garlic is planted in the fall, so late last October individual cloves were planted about an inch and a half deep in good, rich garden soil. Bum some garlic from a friend or order from a source in the northeastern United States. Do not plant store-bought garlic. Maybe you can find some at a local farmers market that was locally grown (and thus well adapted to our region).

I plant my garlic in raised beds, about six inches apart in both directions. Be sure to add plenty of soil nutrients before planting.. I’d suggest a Penn State soil test to determine nutrient needs. Garlic is a “heavy feeder” as they say. Poor soils do not make great garlic.
A few leaves emerge in late fall. Add some weed free straw as a winter mulch when the ground freezes hard and you are set until spring.

There’s not much to do between spring and harvest. Just pull the odd weed that gets thru the mulch and give them a shot of nitrogen in April. Organic folks can use dried blood (extra vampire deterrent) as an N source. Others can use nitrate of soda or urea.
There is nothing like the taste of fresh garlic... and home grown is especially satisfying. You can start looking for locally harvest garlic in July. Get it while you can. Eat some and save some for planting in October. Then you'll be "off the grid"... garlic-wise.

Lymantria dispar, Lymantria dispar, where for art thou or... Where are those gypsy moths?

2008-06-20T16:23:00.011-04:00

Many people in Bucks County fearfully awaited the 2008 crop of gypsy moths. In 2006 and 2007 this leaf eating caterpillar caused significant damage in isolated Bucks County locations... Buckingham, Bedminster, Doylestown. Since the infested areas were small, co-ordinated aerial spraying conducted by the Department of Environmental Protection was not in order. Folks with several acres of trees were sweating it out. Their properties are too small to treat by air and too large to treat from the ground.

But the anticipated devastation has not materialized. Why? Score one for Mother Nature. Those cold, wet nights in mid-May helped the natural enemies of gypsy moth do their work. A fungus and a virus that weaken and then kill the caterpillars is at work. Shrunken, oily caterpillars hanging upside down are infected with the fungus. Those that appear kinked in the middle were had by the virus. Penn State's Extension entomologist, Greg Hoover, and I chatted about this yesterday as we marveled at the collapse of this destructive pest. Greg says this is happening in several parts of the state.

So, a bullet dodged. Actually, this is a normal occurrence. When pest populations peak, they are soon prey to natural enemies. Happens all the time. Just in time this year.

Oil is cheap! And Effective!

2008-06-18T13:20:00.007-04:00

I'm talking about horticultural oil... the kind that is used to kill soft bodies bugs on plants. Many folks still think of oil as a dormant treatment but for more than 20 years professional landscape managers have been using low rates of highly refined oils (plant and mineral) to control aphids, mites, scale crawlers and other soft bodied insects.

Yesterday, Bucks County's trusty and eagle-eyed Master Gardener coordinator, Betsy-Sue Schneck, spotted discoloration on some plants in the demonstration gardens at our office . Closer examination revealed lots of two-spotted spider mites on the underside of the leaves. A shot of horticultural oil , diluted to a 1 % solution (2.5 tablespoons per gallon) knocked them out in 12 hours. Of course we had to use a sprayer that would direct the spray to the undersides of the leaves where the mites were living. Oil only kills the insect it hits and it has almost no residual activity. In a day or less it has evaporated. But it did the job. Lots of dead mites on those leaves this morning.

So, as summer progresses and aphids, adelgids, mites, mealy bugs, lace bugs, scale crawlers (soft bodied immature stage) begin to damage plants, consider horticultural oil as a treatment option. The benefits: It is cheap! It is easy on beneficial bugs; very low toxicity for the applicator; organically approved, and it works well on certain pests.

Limitations: As I mentioned above, you only kill the bug you spray. Thorough coverage is essential. There is no residual activity so pest populations will rebound and a follow up treatment in 7-10 days is usually necessary. Many insects are not controlled by horticultural oil. Borers, Japanese beetles and bagworms (which have just hatched by the way), to name a few.

As always, read and follow label instructions. Oil can cause plant damage if applied to drought stressed plants and under certain other conditions. Watch those rates... plant safety requires careful measuring. You'll find both plant derived and petroleum based oils available in garden centers.

Love those raised garden beds

2008-06-16T10:51:00.008-04:00

How do I love thee... let me count the ways:

You are always mellow.

You are twice as productive as my ex.

You are warm and mosit, but never wet.

I don't have to bend over ( forwards or backwards ) to work with you.

Yes, I am in love with my raised garden beds. And anyone I know who has started gardening in raised beds never goes back to "in-ground" growing. So, there has to be something to it. Let's take a closer look at what makes this such an easy and productive gardening style.

First, let's define raised bed. It is simply soil (or other growing media) raised above the natural grade of the soil. Farmers find that raising planting beds, even just a few inches, results in improved yields and quality. Check out those fields of melons, tomatoes and strawberries some time you're near a farm. You'll see what I mean. Home gardeners usually go a step farther... raising the beds eight, twelve or even twenty-four inches above ground level.

Why are raised beds so productive? Most of it has to do with the soil. Soil in a raised bed drains better (gravity at work). And poor drainage is a major reason for plant failure. Raised beds warm up more quickly in the spring, allowing for early planting and growth. Soil in raised beds is spared the compaction that occurs when we garden "in-ground". Think about how hard bare soil becomes when it is walked on repeatedly. Then you use a tiller to relive the compaction, which further destroys soil structure, and on and on....You won't be walking in the raised beds. And your tillage implements are likely to be your fingers. Very handy. They are always where you can find them.

You get to radically amend the soil that the beds contain. A good rule of thumb is to use about 1/3 to 1/2 of your native soil and mix it with good, finished compost. This results in a very mellow ( soft, loose crumbly) growing medium that plants love. Organic gardeners can boost soil fertility by choosing composts with high levels of plant nutrients (aged manures). Even lousy, clayey soils or uber-porous soils are improved in this way because of the magical properties of organic matter... it aerates heavy/clayey soils and improves moisture holding capacity of light/sandy soils.

OK, you've got a well-drained, aerated, moisture-holding, warm growing medium. If you're a plant, what's not to love? A little fertility (organic or otherwise) and you're going to grow to your full potential...at least until the rabbits, ground hogs, bugs and diseases appear. But that it another story.

What are raised beds structures made of and how big should they be? Here is where you can get creative. No one says they have to be square or rectangular. If that works for you, fine. A buddy of mine has serpentine raised beds made of rocks. Beautiful and functional. I've got beds made of black locust, dawn redwood and white oak. Make them any dimension you want but here are a few tips. Don't make them any wider than twice your reach or you won't get to the middle. Even this may be a stretch. So a maximum width of forty-eight inches makes sense and there is nothing wrong with beds as narrow as twelve inches. I think mine are thirty-six. If I stretch I can reach the other side. How about height? Eight to twelve inches seems to be common. Six is OK and you can stack beds and make the whole thing as high as you want. It is lovely to garden standing up.... or sitting in a chair. If you end up with the typical, low bed, get one of those cushioned pads to kneel on and you're in business.

What kind of wood should you use? I won't enter the pressure treated lumber controversy. Lumber treated with copper, chromium and arsenic (CCA) was popular for years. Certainly plants had no problem with it (unlike wood treated with creosote or pentachlorophenol). Yes, arsenic is a toxic substance but it is likely that your exposure to this was minimal. Now, other preservatives are available and CCA is not an option unless you inherited some. After many long conversations with gardeners about the relative hazard of CCA treated wood I came to this conclusion: anything that takes away from the potential for you to enjoy your garden (or is going to make you gag as you bite into your first born beet) ain't worth the benefits. So just find a material that you are comfortable with. There are lots of options. If you can find black locust and have the patience and strength to make beds out of it... your great grand children can use them. Put it in you will. Don't ask me where I got my twelve-inch dawn redwood boards. I ain't telling. It is light, apparently durable and a pleasure to nail and screw. Time will tell if it will compete with black locust for durability. I kind of doubt it. Saw mills are getting few and far between but they are still out there and can sell you rough cut lumber for beds. Hey, you can order pre-cut, rot resistant cedar boards for raised beds on-line if you have the money. You've got options. Cement blocks work.

A few final things that make raised beds fun. You can convert a raised bed to a cold frame easily by attaching something that will support light transmitting plastic. Beds become mini-greenhouses for pennies. Now you are extending your growing season dramatically. Floating row covers work nicely too but offer less heating potential.

Weeding, a chore even for garden fanatics, is so much easier in raised beds. Weeds still emerge but pulling them is child's play. And because your crop plant density is so much higher in raised beds, their competition reduces weed growth dramatically. By the way, this plant density accounts for much of that two-fold yield increase over in-ground gardening.

Tools get smaller. There are nifty cultivation and planting tools for raised beds. Nothing is motorized. And fingers can do most of the planting. Instead of a hoe you'll be making seed planting rows with your pinky.

I suppose I could go on and on but those are the high points.

Any downside to raised beds? Well, despite all of that nice organic matter, raised beds do dry out quickly. So watering becomes important. Maybe even critical. Since they have high organic matter content the contents of the beds "shrink" during the course of the year as the organic matter decomposes. So you have to refill beds annually. Do it in the fall after the harvest season and let Mother Nature get things setteld in over winter. Other than that, I can't think of a negative. And even watering is really just adding a level of garden management that pays off.

Ok I gotta go. I have a date with Romaine.

Lettuce bolting... tomatoes smoking

2008-06-11T15:16:00.006-04:00

Lettuce is a wonderful garden crop. Easy to grow. Makes a crop in as little as 28 days. And if you find a good seed catalog you'll find dozens of lettuce types... stuff you don't even see in the stores. Almost nothing bothers lettuce except the occasional slug... and hot weather. The recent heat wave and lengthening daylight periods has caused my lettuce to "bolt". Bolting is the natural inclination of lettuce to form seed stalks under long days and high temperature. So there was a mass harvest in my garden and everyone I know is getting a bag full. Fortunately, I have seeded lettuce several times and the less mature plants are still coming on. Plant breeders have improved heat tolerance in lettuce varieties and this helps. For tips on growing lettuce check out Penn State's nifty fact sheet called growing leafy vegetables.

Some like it hot. Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and melons thrive under the conditions we're having right now. You can just about see tomatoes plants grow before your eyes! Even the most tender vegetable crops should be in the garden now. Many gardeners used row covers and other devices to get a jump on the growing season, especially with these cold sensitive crops.

Tomatoes are almost as fool proof as lettuce, but we had a call in the Bucks County Extension office today describing a complete disaster. Twenty-five tomato plants went in... twenty-five are wilting. Same thing happened the previous year. While you will read and hear about Verticillium wilt and Fusarium wilt, these tomato diseases are now a rare occurrence because plant breeders have done a fantastic job breeding for resistance to these problems. So what was up? A quick look at our references came up with a possible cause. Question? Was there a walnut tree growing next to the tomato patch? Answer. Yes. Mystery solved! Walnuts produce a toxin in their roots (as well as leaves and other plant parts) that is deadly to tomato. Doesn't happen often but there it was. A CSI moment. Our web-based tomato fact sheet appear to be under revision but we'll mail you an old fashioned paper copy if you call 215-345-3283 and request it.

Strawberries are hot!

2008-06-10T16:12:00.005-04:00

Strawberries are "in-season" right now in Southeastern Pennsylvania. So there is no better time to get a taste of a locally grown specialty. I know of at least 15 farms in Bucks County where you can pick your own or buy pre-picked, luscious strawberries. (I'll tell you how you can find them in a minute.)
I think many folks miss the opportunity for a gourmet treat by going to the grocery store rather than the farm for berries.. not to mention a lot of other locally produced food. You just CANNOT beat field-ripened fruit.
Strawberry season will only be "in' for another couple of weeks and this hot weather is condensing the picking season, so if you want some of these delicacies, get them while they're hot.
If you want to enjoy fresh strawberry taste all year long, preserve them. Penn State's Let's Preserve fact sheet series will tell you how to make jams and jellies or freeze that fresh flavor. A little strawberry jam in January goes a long way to beating the winter blues.
OK, want to find a local berry farm? Call us (215-345-3283) for the 2008 Fresh From Farms market directory. It lists 63 places where you can find Bucks County grown berries, sweet corn, peaches, eggs, meat and other good stuff. Check it out on the web at: http://bucks.extension.psu.edu/Agriculture/freshfarmlist.html

It's June... why are my tree's leaves falling?

2008-06-09T14:56:00.006-04:00

No, it's not normal for tree leaves to begin falling in late Spring.... but it happens. If you've been observing sycamore trees lately you'll see what I mean. A fungal leaf disease called anthracnose causes stem cankers and leaf disease that results in premature leaf drop.

Should you be concerned? Think about it. Those big old sycamore trees have probably had anthracnose many times. They survived it. So although it looks bad now, obviously they can tolerate this. Why? When summer temperatures arrive the disease stops and trees re-foliate. Certainly the trees have been stressed but they usually recover.