This past weekend, I spent some time cleaning up my perennial plants by cutting out dead and diseased foliage as well as spent flowers. By pruning out the dead stuff, I encourage fresh growth and extend the beauty of the planting, just like I do with annual flowers. Later in the season, I will leave spent perennial flowers and allow the seed heads to ripen and entice finches to visit.
What a great day of rain last week that brought some temperature relief, too! Lawns not recovering from drought after rain may have chinch bugs or other turf pests. Remove one square foot of sod and put in a wheelbarrow of water. Pests will float out into the water. Identify and count different types of larvae that may be attacking the grass roots. Bring samples of the pest to your garden center for identification and advice.
While clearing dead plant tissue, beware of hidden wasp nests in shrubs, rock walls, and woodpiles. Wasps (not bees) attack when disturbed and will continue to attack, right through gardening gloves. Killing a wasp emits a scent that calls to other wasps. Avoid swatting them. Also watch where you step as ground wasps are also active now. If stung, apply a paste of baking soda and water to the swollen site of the sting for quick first aid relief. This reduces the itch and the swelling. Call your doctor or head to the emergency room if the victim has known bee-sting allergies.
Don’t get swollen squash either! If you let zucchini or squash get too big, the plants will not produce as much. Small squash fruits and flowers make delicious additions to salads or stir-fry meals. Keep picking and the plants will keep blooming and fruiting.
Take a snack from your garden if the heat starts to wear you down. A cucumber has high water content—just the thing to refresh the lazy gardener.
Harvest melons, peaches, and tomatoes when the fruit easily separates from the stem with gentle prodding. Also, watermelon is ripe when the side of the melon touching the ground turns yellow!
My cherry tomatoes are ripening now. To keep the fruit ripening, I harvest whatever is starting to pink up. For best flavor, tomatoes should be left at room temperature and they will continue to ripen indoors.
Once again this weekend, I let the water soak deeply into the tomato roots and stared at their tall vines looking for fruit and pests. And then I spotted it: a tomato hornworm. This one was not as large as last year’s pest but still about 2.5 inches long. The larvae of a sphinx moth (Manduca quinquemaculata) looks like a fat tomato stem or spent flowers on a stalk.
Luckily, the nuisance hadn’t done too much damage. But I was certain that more than one egg would have hatched, so I kept looking at the upper-most stems of cherry tomatoes and yes! I spotted another slightly smaller critter. Neither showed cottony egg masses of parasitic wasps so I removed them from the tomatoes and out to the lawn where the birds could snatch them. Squishing would also be appropriate.
Speaking of garden pests, I chatted with a gardener about aphids this week. She showed me a photo of orange specks swarming on a milkweed leaf. These orange aphids choose milkweed (Asclepias spp.) exclusively. They won’t affect other plants, but if they have decimated your small milkweed stand, use mild and organic approved insecticidal soap to reduce their numbers. You can also shoot the aphids off your plants with an intense shot of water. But if you, like she, have milkweed everywhere, you can also be lazy and ignore the aphids on a few plants.
August reminds me of the importance of botanical names for plants. Gardeners through the ages have identified plants by their uses or color or similarity to familiar plants from distant homes. Though seemingly difficult (ugh, Latin, like Caesar Augustus—ha!), the botanical name can help connect similar-looking flowers, growth patterns, or even anticipate pest issues. Plants in the Rosaceae family all attract iridescent and invasive beetles in August, for example. If you have a problem with the beetles, you may choose not to plant raspberries, roses, or hibiscus.
Also, plant species in the same genus may look similar but have different cultural needs. This can be useful knowledge if you want a tropical-looking pool area while living in decidedly not tropical New England. Hibiscus flowers remind us of summery tropical locations, and you can have Hibiscus x rosa-sinensis, the tropical hibiscus, as a flowering houseplant in the Berkshires where you keep the temperature above 40 degrees. But you can also enjoy perennial Hibiscus moscheutos or swamp mallow in your zone five garden. They like at least six hours of sun and consistently moist locations. I replanted mine at a downspout this spring. No flowers yet, but maybe next year.
Another source of those summery flowers: Hibiscus syriacus or rose of Sharon. Though late to green-up and often leafless until mid-June, rose of Sharon explodes with smaller but still pretty hibiscus flowers through this month. Rose of Sharon makes a great hedge around a pool in August when you are most likely to use it in the Berkshires.
I call myself the Lazy Berkshire Gardener because I don’t want to work too hard in my gardens. I want to enjoy them. I find it easier to observe my landscape and let the compost happen, the water pool up, or daisies to self-sow. I look for ways to do the minimum task for the biggest impact. For example, mulching is better than spraying and much better than weeding all season. I look for beautiful, low-maintenance plants that thrive in or at least tolerate my garden conditions. Plus, I am willing to live with the consequences if I miss something.
