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When it comes to gardening, July is a heavy lifting month. Heat and humidity encourage disease; pests take hold plants. The intrepid garden blogger carries on..
GardenRant pointed us to Jane Black's story on the reasons for Michelle Obama's very public vegetable garden. The garden is the visible stepping off point for an ongoing national conversation about healthy diet. However, discussing the first family's choices in eating is quite different than trying to tell everyone else to eat a similar way.
Given the success of the garden, it's no surprise that part of the East Wing strategy is to keep doing what they're doing: make fresh, healthful food seem accessible, even normal. In interviews and at public events, Obama makes a point of telling her own story. As a working mother, she often took her daughters out to eat several times a week or ordered a pizza for dinner. When the girls began to gain weight, she says, her pediatrician suggested she rethink how the family was eating. By making a "small change in our family's diet and adding more fresh produce for my family, Barack, the girls, me, we all started to notice over a very short period of time that we felt much better," Obama said at the harvest event.
While the White House is wrestling with inspiring Americans to rethink their diet, Farmgirl Susan is wrestling with her personal inspiration: If looking at it only depresses/frustrates/irritates you, then it's time to rip it up or toss it out.
In this 4'x8' raised bed are my second (very late) broccoli planting (seeds started in containers), four rows of Maxibel and Masai haricots verts bush beans, a few dozen kohlrabi plants, a volunteer dill plant, and weeds. The first harvest of beans is over (I picked about 2 pounds), and I've finally come to realize that whatever matures after that initial crop is usually disappointing, especially in July and August. So out they go. It feels so liberating!
Not feeling the joy that Susan did pulling out her plants, Margaret from Away to Garden is among the many home gardeners examining tomato plants suffereing severe damage from a very wet June. The lower leaves of plants are yellowing and spotted with black. Fortunately, it appears that her plants are not suffering from the late blight:
This is the affliction (affecting tomatoes and potatoes) that caused the 1840s Irish Potato Famine, and it has never been recorded this early in the United States, apparently, nor this extensively, with much of the East affected. Fears that further wet conditions will bring vast commercial-crop losses of tomatoes and potatoes are running high. Fungicidal sprays are the retaliation tactic (weekly Neem oil being the non-toxic choice) but even those may fail in severe cases, and if the weather helps the fungus to get an increasing edge.
Still Margaret and many other home gardeners are wondering if they will even get any tomatoes to pick this year.
Enough heavy news from gardens!
Playing in the Dirt's Amy reminds us that many nurseries are beginning to clear out some of their stock. If you have the space, now is the perfect time for gardening on the cheap: End-of-season sales.
When shopping for sale plants toward the end of the season, be aware of the following:
- Perennials may have already bloomed in their plastic containers. This doesn’t mean that it’s too late to buy them. I’ve bought past-blooming perennial plants late in the season many times. Sure, you won’t have an instant colour impact, but next season they’ll come back in your garden better than ever.
- Both annual and perennial flowers on sale might look a little ragged. If you can look past yellowing or dead leaves and spent blooms, you’ll see that most of these plants are still in salvageable shape. I usually clean them up right there at the garden centre, leaving a neat little pile of dead leaves, stems, and deadheads behind.
- Do avoid buying sale plants that are covered in powdery mildew or show evidence of other disease or insect infestation. No sale price is worth the spread of disease among the existing plants in your garden.
- Some garden centres will even mark down their tools, planters, fertilizers and potting soil. This is a great time to stock up if you have space for storage until you need these items.
Hmmm... my tomato plants are failing (eaten through by pocket gophers). If I'm lucky, could I find replacement plants
