The Garden Gate

Garden tips for every month of the year!

May

Last month brought us flowering landscapes that were just beautiful. It is a grand season to be working outdoors before it gets too hot.

There is much we can plant now that will provide color in weeks to come. Among the annuals are choices such as Celosia, Coleus, Calliopsis, Dusty Miller, Exacum, Gaillardia, Gazania, Geranium, Hollyhock, Impatiens, Lobelia, Marguerite Daisy, Marigold, Nicotiana, Ornamental Pepper, Pentas, Phlox, Portulaca, Rudbeckia, Salvia, Periwinkle, Sweet William, Thunbergia, Torenia, Verbena, and Zinnia.

Many bulbs, tubers, corms, or rhizomatous plants can also be set out now. Among them are Allium, Alstroemeria, Amazon lily, Aztec lily, Blood lily, Caladium, Canna lily, Gladiolus, Gloriosa lily, Kaffir lily, Lily, Walking Iris, African lily, Spider lily, Tiger Flower, and Tritonia.

Our spring vegetable gardens should be in and growing now. Fertilize the garden monthly until harvest is over to keep vegetables healthy and in good growth. It is recommended that you use a 15-0-15 fertilizer at the rate of ½ to 1 pounds per 100 foot of row. Place this in a shallow furrow aside the plants 3-4 inches out. After four weeks, apply this same amount again and then repeat four weeks later. This time scatter it over the ground and work it in with your fingers. Keep it off the plants!

Tomato hornworms are common pests in our gardens this time of year. They can also attack pepper but mostly we see them on tomatoes. The hornworm may reach 3½ to 4 inches in length when fully grown. The worms also have a hornlike projection on the upper end of their body that looks like a stinger but they are not capable of stinging with it.

Hornworms can easily be removed by hand and destroyed. They are usually eaten by paper wasps; however, if they become large they will strip a plant of foliage in a short period of time so you need to be on a constant look out for them. If you see some leaves eaten on your tomatoes, take a small spray bottle and fill it with cool water (not ice water) and start misting the plants. If this hits a hornworm it will jerk up and you can more easily spot them. Otherwise, they are really hard to see and it’s easy to miss two or three when your are out scouting for them. Bacillus thuringiensis is a bio-friendly pesticide that works only on caterpillars. When they eat it, their digestive system become paralyzed and they stop feeding. This happens in less than an hour of ingesting the pesticide, so you see no more damage and the good thing about this product is it does not harm beneficial insects (ladybugs, bees, etc.) as well as not being toxic to lizards, birds, or mammals (including people). In our area, it is either sold as B.T., Thuracide, or Dipel. I suggest using the spray-on formulations, instead of the dusts. I’ve found coverage and control seems to be better.

Also, be on the lookout for Mexican Bean Beetles which can also do lots of damage in the vegetable garden, attacking the leaves of beans. The adults are ¼ to a inches long, bronze in color with 16 black spots on their backs. They are members of the Lady Beetle family and closely resemble them but are certainly the "black sheep" of that family. Mexican Bean Beetle larvae are yellow with rows of black-tipped branched spines growing from their backs. The larvae reach a inch in length. Both adults and larvae feed on the underside of the leaves eating away tissues between the veins and leaving a skeletonized leaf. If beetle populations become heavy, they must be controlled with a pesticide, so keep an eye out for them and handpick them each time they are spotted, before they get established in your bean patch. This becomes an almost everyday thing. Liquid Sevin formulations are an effective spray material if they suddenly get out of hand, but this material is very toxic to pollinating honeybees, so don’t use it in the garden until almost sunset, when bee activity is at a minimum. Again, use the spray-on formulations. Using dusting Sevin is particular hazardous to honeybees because it never dries and the hairy bodied bee easily picks it up when it visits treated plants.

With our lawns now actively growing, weekly mowing is upon us. Allowing growth so tall that more than a the blade length is removed with any cut is stressing to grass. This leads to weaken lawns more prone to disease. One disease associated with mower stress is called "Take-all Disease of St. Augustine." The weak fungus causing this disease can rapidly colonize a lawn when it is improperly cut. It is frequently found in lawns where the mower blade is not kept sharp causing a tattered cut and large wound surfaces or where the cut is being made too low. Densely thatched (spongy) lawns also succumb to this disease. The symptoms are much like those we see with Brown Patch fungus. Unfortunately the chemical controls for Brown Patch do not work on Take-all. The key to control seems to be keeping the lawn healthy, and doing this through proper mowing heights (2-4" depending on the variety of St. Augustinegrass), regularly sharpened blades, mowing at intervals so that no more than a the grass blade length is removed at a time, and not mowing the grass when wet. Adopting all these practices seems the best way to combat this more and more frequently encountered stress-related turf disease.

If you have a spot of bare ground under an oak tree, the next few months are when you’ll likely see a 1½ to 2 inch long black and yellow stripped wasp using it for a nesting area. This is the Cicada Killer. The wasp digs tunnels causing multiple piles of soil all under oaks. It then goes about stinging and paralyzing Cicadas (those insects that make the shrill screeching sound in trees during the summer). As these fall to the ground, the wasp drags the Cicada to her burrow and then takes it down inside where she lays eggs on its "preserved/mummified" body. As her young hatch, they then have something to feed on, until they emerge as an adult wasp. This wasp will hover at your face if you invade its nest site, but it’s not aggressive and would probably have to be grabbed to actually sting. Many times it is the male trying to drive you away and it has no stinger. If they become such a nuisance you don’t care to ignore them, in future years, keep those bare areas well mulched. This should discourage them. For now, either co-exist with them or cover the area with a thick layer of mulch for the rest of the summer.

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