A Big Tomato Harvest after a Wet August

Fresh Harvest of Cherry Tomatoes

We had a lot of rain in the last 30 days. 8-10 inches in fact. My gardening friend quoted "17 inches in 16 days" so results vary. The good or the bad part of it, depending on your perspective, is most of the rain would fall overnight. There was no progress made on indoor projects. I remained outdoors mucking around wet grass and picking over-plump tomatoes.

Eggplant with Garlic Sauce

Vegetables

Tomatoes were splitting with the excessive rain, but mostly edible. I harvested a nice bunch of eggplant to make my eggplant with garlic side dish. The eggplants are small, about 6 inches long, but I'm happy to have them. It looks like another group will be ready for a September harvest.

Tomato Harvest

Tomato and Eggplant Garden

Tomato Plants

The jalapeños are plentiful. My summer's first serving of jalapeno poppers were so intensely hot, however, it scared us away from one of our favorite dishes.

Pests

Hornworm Eating Green Tomato

There was an uptick in hornworm and other caterpillar activity on the tomatoes. This is a challenging game of trying to spot the very well-camouflaged worm on the plant. Clues are a stripped stem or a chewed green tomato (see photo) or waste material on leaves.

False Dragonhead Flower

Flowers in bloom

The late summer flowers are starting to bloom now. A couple of days ago, the first False Dragonhead bloomed. When several of these bloom together, the color impact of the purple is amazing.

Crape Myrtle Tree in Bloom

The flowers on the Crape Myrtle tree are a deep pink or fuchsia color. The tree has been allowed to grow tall so that the blooms are at the second story windows. Cleomes have finished blooming and I've collected seeds.

American Beautyberry

The American Beautyberry is known more for its purple berries than flowers. The green berries are starting to change to a dramatic purple.

Coming Up Everywhere

Wind and birds have reseeded several plants across the yard.  Lemon Balm, Crape Myrtle, and American Beautyberry plants are popping up everywhere.

☔

I hope you are having a great August! You can find rainfall totals for U.S. locations here.

Lots of Green Tomatoes in my July Garden

Cherry Tomatoes on Patio Plant

 Vegetable Garden

Since I planted tomatoes and peppers late this year, July presents itself with lots of green tomatoes. I have bunches of cherry tomatoes growing in containers on the deck. Massive caged tomato plants are along the back of the house. Small eggplants have started in this area also. I hope to get good eggplant produce, but recent years have been plagued with the opposite. In the past, aphids have overrun the eggplant so I aggressively treated these with a soap solution this year.

Cherry Tomato Plants Thrive on Deck

Tomato Plants off the Deck

Across the yard in the traditional vegetable garden, the yellow and zucchini squash are battling with the insects. Jalapeno peppers are producing great, but the green pepper plants are off to a slow start. Several of these plants died after bugs ate most of the leaves..

It is interesting that my zucchini, which has always been a stalwart of the garden, has not produced a single fruit. I photographed the beginnings of one, but haven't seen anything since. The squash bugs have been around for a couple months and I haven't had the heart to use a pesticide. The store-bought yellow squash plants are producing in small numbers.

We're making plans to rest this garden area next year. Because of back problems, I'm to avoid bending, and weeds and grasses have taken over.

Japanese Beetles on Eggplant Leaves

Red-spotted Purple Butterfly on Butterfly Bush Flower

Flowers in Bloom

The Butterfly Bushes are smelling great and attracting many skippers and swallowtail butterflies. The Hibiscus is blooming and attracting bumble bees. Stargazer lilies continue to bloom.

Hibiscus in Bloom

Pests

Japanese Beetles are numerous this year. In the past, they have destroyed Hibiscus blooms and Azalea leaves with their relentless appetites. This year, my gardener neighbors and I have noticed the diversity of plants being attacked by this pest. Butterfly Bush blooms, Crape Myrtle leaves, Strawberry leaves, Cleome blooms, and Asparagus ferns are now on the menu. I collect the clumsy beetles in jars of soap water. It's a chore that can go on all day. It seems I will have to treat the yard in the spring to curb the beetle infestation.

Sedum Showing Leaf Damage

The mystery pest of the month has attacked the sedum growing in the front yard. The leaves have been partially removed down the stem in "corn cob" fashion. Is it insect or is it animal?

Thanks for reading my blog post! I hope your gardening is going well. All the best, Pam

June is Flower Time!

Stargazer Lillies

Flowers in Bloom

Early June brings daily blooms of all varieties. Perennials flourish from a 20 year history in this patch of cultivation. The succulent garden has spectacular yellow prickly pear blooms and orange daylilies - these are the same daylilies that grow on the roadsides in North Carolina.

Prickly Pear Cactus Blooms

Succulent Garden

Stargazer Lily Flower

What we call the "Mother's Day" lilies are some exotics like the Stargazer Lily gifted to me over the years. Sometimes they make a May appearance, but this year they started in early June.

Gardenia Flower

The gardenia bush with a lovely sweet fragrance has more flowers every year. It starts slow with 2 blooms and then, like popcorn, busts out in white blossoms. I can see 20 blossoms from my kitchen window. This bush is a testimony to patience and rooting your own plants. A girlfriend and I were walking through downtown Wake Forest when we admired a blooming gardenia. She picked a flower, and I put it in a water glass where it grew roots. Now it's a bush with a 3 foot diameter! ( 15 years or so have passed)

Cleome Flower Blooming

Cleomes are the only annuals I grow every year. They drop enough seeds to insure plants sprout the next season.

Red-spotted Purple Butterfly on Butterfly Bush Bloom

My blooming flower report would not be complete without mention of the butterfly bushes. The one by the mailbox has started to bloom (purple). It gets the most direct sun. This year seedlings are sprouting everywhere seeds were dropped. Cracks along the brick steps, pots on the deck started with lemon balm, and the vegetable garden. Starting out small, these plants turn into mighty purple butterfly-attracting bushes!

Zucchini Squash is Blooming

Last Year's Overgrown Zucchini Squash

Vegetable Garden

The right combination of weather factors caused all the zucchini squash to bloom together seemingly overnight. Even the purchased yellow squash flowered.

Zucchini is tricky to raise because the green fruit blends in and under the large leaves. They are often discovered as gigantic fruits- 12 inches plus!

The bush bean plants are blooming, but my yield will be small. A whole row was lost to squirrel predation of the seeds. A couple of the "bush beans' are actually vines - not sure where they will go.

Cherry Tomato Plants on Deck

Mulched Tomato Plants

Late in May we purchased eggplant and tomato plants. Because of last year's fungus, we have started these plants in new gardens around the house. Cherry tomato plants are in pots on the deck. I had fun mulching these new vegetable gardens with decayed leaves. Hopefully this will hold back the Bermuda grass that is so persistent in these areas.

My enthusiasm over the strawberry plants has waned as the squirrels help themselves and leave half eaten fruit to clean up.

Moss Disturbed by Raccoons

Pests and Problems

There are lots of mossy areas on the property and raccoons have "rolled up" the moss in their nocturnal searches for food.The disturbed ground looks terrible, but I'm unaware of any solutions.

Every year as my hibiscus leafs out, small caterpillars skeletonize the leaves. I've played it both ways. One year I let the leaf massacre proceed, the plant bloomed as usual. Last year, I dusted lightly to stop the carnage. Because the plants are at the entranceway to the house, I'm leaning towards treating the leaves.

If you have made it to the end of this article, you realize there's a lot going on with the June gardens in North Carolina. I'm sure with warmer weather your garden activities have picked up as well. I would love to hear about it. Please leave your comments below. Have fun in your garden and all the best!

4 Tips for My Younger Gardener Self

Me giving advice to my younger self

If I could go back in time and offer my younger gardener-self advice, it would be as follows:

1- Plant flowering perennials. They return year-after-year. My favorites are Butterfly Bushes, Azaleas, Peonies, Rhododendrons, Daylilies, and Irises.

A Tiger Swallowtail enjoying Butterfly Bush

2- Trim flowering bushes yearly after blooming. Left alone many will increase in size and swallow up other landscape plants. Every year I struggle with the massive size of Forsythias and Camellias planted two decades ago.

"City Block" sized Forsythia bush

3- Handle invasives with care. In 20 years (or even 5) they will take over significant landscape space. My personal challenges with invasives are: Liriope (also called Monkey Grass), English Ivy, and Periwinkle. My article on the subject can be found at this link.

English Ivy climbing tree trunk

4- Only plant vegetable gardens in the sun. A successful vegetable garden requires lots of sunlight and you're wasting time otherwise.

Full sun on the vegetable garden

What about you? What gardening lessons have you learned over the years? What would you have done differently in your gardens and landscape? Please leave your comments below.

Advertising on this blog supports my writing. By clicking an ad, you are under no obligation to buy. If you see an advertisement of interest, please click.
 

Winter Comes Roaring Back in March

Beautiful Daffodils in February 2017

In central North Carolina, we enjoyed extremely mild February weather, and the most beautiful daffodil crop in recent memory. People were wearing shorts, and even I wore sandals on February 12 when temperatures hit 83F. The mean temperature for February was 53.3F which was higher than the record set in 1887. 1887!

It was a glorious month! We were planning our vegetable garden. Fortunately,  local meteorologists cautioned that April 15th is the average last frost so most gardeners resisted the urge to rush spring planting.

Dark-eyed Juncos Hung Around for Winter's Return

Winter came back in March. I'm writing this on the 19th, and temperatures have dipped below freezing on 7 days. I have never seen vegetative damage from a hard freeze this severe. Because February teased the plants into an early spring, more blooms and tender leaves took a beating when temperatures dipped below freezing.

Frost Damage on Leaves of Butterfly Bush

Cold Temperatures Drop Irises

 

Sedum was Unaffected by Cold

Young Peony Survived Frost without Damage

 Have you had unseasonable weather in your area? How has it affected your plants? Please share in the comments below. All the best everyone! Nice spring weather is just around the corner.

Advertising on this blog supports my writing. By clicking an ad, you are under no obligation to buy. If you see an advertisement of interest, please click.
 

Winter Therapy for the House-Bound Gardener

Dark-eyed Junco in Snow

Even in the southeast, winter weather events can curtail outdoor activities. It's not so easy for outdoor-loving gardeners to adapt to winter weather. As I'm writing, North Carolina is in the middle of it's first snowfall. Schools are closed for the 2nd day.


In my Gardening Know How guest blog article, I write about activities for the house-bound gardener. Please read it at this link: https://goo.gl/2mjKz7

Advertising on this blog supports my writing. By clicking an ad, you are under no obligation to buy. If you see an advertisement of interest, please click.
 

August 2016 State of the Garden

Lantana Blooms

Vegetable Garden Remnants

In my North Carolina vegetable garden, August is a month of cleaning up dead plants and cutting back weeds plus fighting bugs so the few remaining plants can survive.

Hornworm with Parasitic Eggs Attached

Tobacco Hornworm

Another Hornworm!

Vegetables

Squash production slowed to a crawl and plants died off two at a time. Tomatoes ripened so slowly that worms and stink bugs enjoyed them before I could. Hornworms appeared on the Green Pepper plants on a regular basis. Left unchecked, these voracious eaters will completely defoliate a plant. I always spotted the waste material before spotting the well-camouflaged caterpillars.

Spaghetti Squash

I harvested a spaghetti squash gourd in late July. Growing from seed to harvest took about 90 days. Two other gourds had to be pulled since the vines were dried up and weakened by Squash Vine Borers. Regular squash grows rapidly but spaghetti squash takes much longer. The challenge is that the vines have to stay healthy weeks longer to grow the spaghetti gourds.

Sunflower

Flowers

I can't say enough about the beautiful sunflowers. they continue to amaze. I grew them in circles hoping large stalks would fall towards each other for support. That didn't happen. The circles filled up with tall grass and weeds. Next year I'll go back to single rows.

Mexican Petunia

A new addition to my perennial flowers is a Mexican Petunia. I brought a plant back from Georgia last Thanksgiving. I babied it in a Mason jar over the winter and planted it in late Spring. It was slow to flower, but was worth the wait.

Rain has been sparse for the last 2 weeks and that has given me a breather from grass cutting. With regular rains, this month has required lots of mower time.

How's your August/ September garden doing? I would love to hear about it. I'm already planning next year's vegetable garden with severe cuts in the number of plants. What about you?


Advertising on this blog supports my writing. By clicking an ad, you are under no obligation to buy. If you see an advertisement of interest, please click.

4 Favorite Plants that became Invasive

When we first built our home on a 3 acre lot, my gardening goal was to fill up the many bare spots in the landscape with favorite plants. Fast forward 20 years and some of these plants have become invasive. Below I'll describe the plants and how they've worn out their horticultural welcome.

Area Overgrown with Liriope

1 - Liriope

Liriope is also known as Monkey Grass and Creeping Lilyturf. When I first started gardening 30 years ago (at a different property), this was the plant everyone used along sidewalks and driveways as a border. I had no idea that this border plant can morph into a ground cover.

Recent research reveals there is a clumping form(Liriope muscari) and a ground cover(Liriope spicata) species. The ground cover form spreads through underground stems with rhizomes. These rhizomes have the appearance of little bulbs on the roots and are hard to completely remove.

Overgrown liriope is one of the most difficult areas to reclaim. While I was busy raising children, our front yard garden along the house became overrun with it . It provided a hiding place for snakes, rodents, and insects. In the summers, I would mow a path through it to get to the water faucet.

To reclaim this area, we treated the liriope with glycosphate (Roundup) 3 times. Caution was taken to avoid peony and butterfly bushes in the same area. Once the die-off was complete, I covered the area with barrier fabric and topped with mulch. As individual plants sprout through, they are sprayed.

I'm happy with the reclamation. Now I can walk around this area and tend to other plants. Unfortunately, this is not the only area I planted with Monkey Grass...

English Ivy Growing Up a Tree

2 - English Ivy

I admired a friend's groundcover of English Ivy. I couldn't wait to start my own. The ivy has taken over many flat areas as well as climbing trees and the side of our house. It can be killed with glycosphate - a single treatment will do. Once it dies on a brick wall, the vines need to be removed by hand. For ivy growing up a tree trunk, cut the vine at the base of the tree, and pull off what you can.

Periwinkle Vines as Ground Cover

3 - Periwinkle

I'm seeing a pattern here as Periwinkle is another plant that I admired in another yard. It has beautiful lavender flowers even on sunny winter days and attractive variegated leaves. It can create a ground cover and choke out smaller plants. Fortunately, Periwinkle vines are easy to pull up roots and all.

Periwinkle Vines with Flower

"City Block" Forsythia

4 - Forsythia

I have what I call "city block" Forsythia. This is a bush that has expanded over the years to a tremendous size covering up neighbor plants.  Forsythia spreads by sending shoots downward where they attached to the ground and become an independent plant. Severe pruning can get the bush back down to size. Unless roots are dug up, chemical treatment of sprouts will be necessary.

Blooming Forsythia-Woodpecker in Foreground

What about you? What plants have grown out of control in your yard? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

Advertising on this blog supports my writing. By clicking an ad, you are under no obligation to buy. If you see an advertisement of interest, please click.