Marge in Ackley has some yellowing on her tomato plants along with some brown spots.  It could be a couple of things, but it is probably Septoria Leaf Spot.  This is the most common leaf disease of tomatoes in Iowa. 

Septoria leaf spot

Septoria leaf spot

It is caused by the fungus Septoria lycopersici and first appears as small spots that soon become about 1/8 inch in diameter.  These spots gradually develop grayish white centers with dark edges.  The light-colored centers of the spots are the most distinctive symptom of Septoria leaf spot.  Spores are spread to new leaves by splashing rain and heavily infected leaves will turn yellow, wither and eventually fall off.  The lower leaves are infected first and the disease will progress upward if the rainy weather lasts awhile.  And we have had plenty of that.

The fungus survives the winter in tomato debris so it is important to clean up the bed after the growing season is finished. 

The control of Septoria leaf spot is a combination of cultural practices…. and they can also help reduce the risk of many other diseases. Here they are (from the Iowa State University Extension service):

    -Plant transplants far enough apart that the plants will not be crowded after they are full grown in order to help the leaves dry out rapidly.

    -Water at the base of the plant to minimize the amount of time the leaves are wet.  And water in the morning rather than the evening.

    -Remove as much debris as possible in the fall.

    -Rotate crops so that tomatoes are only grown in the same ground every three or four years.

    -Avoid working with the plants when the foliage is wet to avoid spreading the disease-causing microorganisms.

One of the other ‘yellow-leaf-black-spot’ diseases on tomatoes is Early blight.  This is caused by the fungus Alternaria solaniand can also be called Alternaria leaf spot or target spot.

Early blight

This is also common on Iowa tomatoes and can attack the same plants that have Septoria leaf spot.  Losing the lower leaves early is the most obvious symptom of this disease.

The fungus can sometimes attack fruit at the stem end, causing large sunken areas with concentric rings and a black, velvety appearance. 

Early blight fruit

Warm and wet weather (sound familiar?) favors the rapid spread of early blight.

You can use the same procedures to control early bite as those for Septoria leaf spot.  Also avoid rotating with potatoes. 

Next up is Bacterial spot.  This is caused by a bacteria, Xanthomonas campestris pv. vesicatoria and infects both tomato and pepper plants. 

Bacterial Spot

Warm and rainy weather favors the rapid spread of bacterial spot.

Use the same control measures as for Septoria leaf spot, although, buying disease-free transplants is particularly crucial for controlling this and other bacterial diseases, since the bacteria can be transmitted to the seedlings from contaminated seeds.  Avoid rotating with peppers and avoid handling infected plants any more than is necessary.

Bacterial speck is caused by the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato and does not affect peppers but may survive on non-host plants

Bacterial speck

The specks are a lot smaller than the spots caused by bacterial spot, don’t go into the fruit too deeply and can be scraped off with a fingernail.  It usually doesn’t reduce yields greatly, but it can affect fruit quality.  This type of infection is favored by cool, wet conditions.  Control is pretty much the same story:  follow the same measures as for Septoria leaf spot.

So essentially, make sure there is plenty of air flow around your tomato plants, water in the morning and at the base of the plant, clean up any debris from the bed and rotate, rotate, rotate!

There are a lot of other things that can affect one of our favorite summer fruits.  To read up on more (and where I got the above information from) about Tomato diseases and disorders click here. 

And good luck with your tomatoes!

Dig it!

Posted under Diseases

Well, okay.  It’s not a bug.  It is a mollusk.  Like a snail, without the mobile home on his back.

With all the moisture we have been getting we don’t just have to worry about mushrooms.  Slugs are also a big problem.  They love it when it is cool and moist.  There are many species of slugs, they are not host-specific and have a very diverse diet with hostas being one of their favorite dinners.  The positive side of the slug is that many species are decomposers and feed on fallen leaves, dead insects and dead worms.  They also provide food for snakes, toads, turtles and birds.  That still doesn’t help the hostas or other plants, though.

If you are determined to get rid of them you will probably have to work at doing so.  Slugs are nocturnal and feed at night when we aren’t looking for them.  They like cool, dark, moist hiding places during the day.  We obviously have the moist conditions down.  When it gets hot and dry, you would think they would die.  Well, they don’t.  They bury themselves int eh soil or find a well-protected (and moist) spot where they are in a kind of state of suspended animation.  They surround themselves in a mucous-like cocoon and wait until it gets wet and cool enough again.

Slugs secrete this slimy mucous at other times as well.  They will leave a silvery trail  as they move across plants and smooth objects.  They feed by grating away the surface of the plant. 

This is a banana slug. Ours don't get this big, but I wanted to show you the slug slime. Yuck.

In order to control slugs you need to control the favorable places where slugs live and reproduce.   Get rid of wood chip mulch and replace with shredded mulch.  The wood chips have a larger surface area for the slugs to hide under during the day.  Open up the garden more to allow more air to dry out the moist spots.  That may not work too well when we have been as wet as we have been, though. 

Wood chip mulch. These provide shelter to the slugs. Replace with shredded mulch.

You can use trap boards or moist newspaper or even carpet samples and place them on the ground around plants where slugs have been feeding.  After a couple of days, look at the underside of the traps and remove and destroy any slugs that have gathered there. 

Slugs love beer. 

Use a shallow container, like a yogurt cup.  Bury it to within a half inch of the rim and fill it with beer or even baker’s yeast dissolved in water.  Slugs will crawl in and drown.  You can put a loose cover over the beer trap to shade it and keep rain from diluting it.

Slugs don’t like to crawl over anything dry, dusty or scratchy.  Put a border of lime, road dust, diatomaceous earth, cinders, coarse sawdust, gravel or sand around your plants or an area of the garden.  In order to secrete enough mucus to free themselves from these materials they become exhausted and die.  If you use this method remember that lime affects the pH of the soil.  And never use salt because it isn’t healthy for most plant growth.

Since slugs are not bugs, they cannot be controlled with insecticides.  You will need to use molluscicides.  And many contain metaldehyde.  It may be effective, but it is rapidly deactivated by sunlight and water so it needs to be reapplied frequently.    You also can’t use it in vegetable gardens and can be toxic to pets if they ingest it. 

If you want to go the most natural way, talk to the toads.  Toads are the most important natural enemy of slugs. 

And I have read that many people also say that ducks keep gardens slug free, too.  Although I think they will quack, er, talk back at you.  The toads may be a bit quieter.

Dig it!

Posted under Pests

I don’t know if you have noticed, but we have been getting a lot of rain lately.  And when I say “a lot” I mean “A LOT” as in several inches over the last few weeks.  Okay, the several inches may be in isolated areas, but we have had A LOT of rain.  This leads to all sorts of problems.  A slow down at the car wash, the lawn care services, the pools… the pools that appear in your backyard… and mushrooms popping up everywhere!

What you see in the yard is actually the “fruit” of a fungi.  When they appear it usually indicates that there is some decaying tree stumps or roots in the soil.  Or even some mulch.  I spoke with Black Hawk County Horticulturist Bryan Foster and he mentioned that sometimes morels will even grow in mulch!  Now be careful what you step on while looking for those elusive fungi. 

While mushrooms, or toadstools, in the lawn can be annoying, they usually don’t cause any harm to turfgrass.  There is really nothing that can be applied to the soil to prevent them from emerging.  Just mow them off or rake them and throw them away as they appear.  When it gets warmer and drier they will stop appearing.  When the stump, root or whatever the food source is has finally rotted away, the mushrooms with disappear, too. 

Now there is another type of yard fungi that can cause some trouble to the lawn.  These are the ones that can create fairy rings in your yard. 

This type of fungus can be seen from a distance since it tends to create a circle or arc of dark green or brown grass.  Fair ring circles can be many feet in diameter and tend to grow outward slowly. 

It used to be thought that they were caused by fairies dancing in a circle in the middle of the night, but in reality they are caused by an assortment of fungi feeding on dead, organic matter in the grass and soil.  As the fungi break down this matter, the nutrients are released leading to a darker area of turfgrass.  If the structure is very dense it may interfere with the movement of water to the roots of the turfgrass and circles of dead grass may be seen.  And some fairy rings produce mushrooms in the circle, mainly late summer or early fall.

Fairy rings are difficult to get rid of and fungicides are not very effective.  Removal of the soil in the ring is the primary means of control, but doesn’t always work and may not be very feasible if the fairy ring is large.

You can find out more about Iowa’s Mushrooms and other nonflowering plants by clicking here.

Don’t eat any mushrooms unless you are absolutely sure about what you are about to put into your mouth.  Contact your local Iowa State Extension office for more information.

Dig it!

Posted under General

My Sunday started at 4:52 AM (8 minutes before Dwayne’s alarm went off) when Louie (cat number 2) stood on my bladder.  Louie is 15 pounds and my bladder was full.  Needless to say, I got up, which was Louie’s intention.  Now I could feed him… oh, and, his brothers, too.   Now that I’m up, I’m ready to get outside and do some weeding.  Those weeds should pull up quite easily with the rain on Saturday.  Although, I suppose I should wait for the sun to come up.

After Dwayne headed to work, I ate my breakfast, played with the cats a little and then headed out into the chilly, damp morning. I managed to get our little “hill” weeded and a few other unwanted plants pulled in another part of the garden before I heard the chickadee.  He doesn’t come to visit often, so I picked up my stuff and headed inside.

About an hour later, I headed into town.  We are working on landscaping one side of our house and have been getting a bush or two at a time.  This week’s purchase was Cardinal Candy Viburnum.  It has creamy white flowers in spring and bright red fruit in the fall.  It should be striking when it fruits.  I also needed to get some mulch.  I hit three garden centers in two hours, bought two new pots, lots of annuals, a few perennials and even managed to remember the Viburnum. 

When I got home at noon, I ate a quick lunch and then headed back outside and got down to business.

I added two more variegated vinca vines to our "Michael Pot". The one it had didn't fill it up enough.

Added more Celosia to the front of the house to fill out a large bare spot...

These are white Hypoestes. They will hopefully add a little contrast to the celosia.

These are called Cockscomb Celosia, and if they grow correctly will look like the comb on a rooster's head.

Added two more Emerald Blue Creeping Phlox to our new bed around our ash tree.

Dwayne suggested some Dusty Miller to offset the Brass Lantern Coral Bells, but I couldn't find any on Sunday. So I got Soprano White Osteospermum.

For one of the new pots I got on Sunday, I planted some white Pentas and four Forever Blue Lisianthus. I hope the hummingbirds like them, even though they aren't red.

I did get some perennials for the hummingbirds. These two are called Geum. One is "Double Bloody Mary" and the other is "Mrs. Bradshaw". They are on our "red" hill which is mostly pink.

These two are Maltese Cross. The top one is "Lumina Bronze Leaf Red" and the other tag didn't have a common name listed, but the scientific name is "Lynchnis chalcedonica". They have different flower structure, but should both be attractive to the hummingbirds.

This one is for me. I have always wanted to try out the Fiber Optic plant. It should stand out nicely against the red "velvet" coleus.

Another one for the hummingbirds. This is Saratoga Red and Saratoga Lime Nicotiana.

Yes, I know it looks dead, but that, my friend, is Leatherleaf Sedge surrounded by verbena.

Dwayne likes impatiens. I don't particularly like them. I was going to give in and get some for him, however, what I grabbed was vinca. I did not do it on purpose, at least not consciously. I don't think Dwayne believes me.

When Dwayne got home, we planted the Cardinal Candy Viburnum.

Before I went in to get ready for bed, we put mulch around the celosia to keep them a bit more moist on the west side of the house. It makes it look better, too!

And there is plenty more to do….

Dig it!

Posted under General, Spring

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that our tomato-in-a-bag’s hanger came out of the tree.  It appeared fine at the time… but apparently it took a bit to show the damage.

This isn't much bigger than a week ago and it looks like it needs to be watered. However, it had just rained plenty...

Upon closer inspection, I think it is toast….

It looks like it got smashed into the side and scraped. I wish I had looked closer to begin with.

I’ll probably pull this one out and plant something else.  Maybe a yellow squash.  Dwayne thinks it will be too heavy and that may be, but I’ll try it out…. assuming I can get it into the bag without too much damage to the bag or the plant!

Dig it!

Posted under General

I think all gardeners (and non-gardeners) would agree that there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done.  It is amazing, however, how much you can get done in just a few hours.  A couple of Sundays ago, I got up at 4:30 when Dwayne’s alarm went off.  I know, you think that’s really early, and it is.  But with my schedule, that’s sleeping in!  Anyway, when he headed off to work, I ate my breakfast and then headed outside.  One of the nice things about this time of year is that the sun comes up before 6.  I was in the garden by 6:30.

I planted tomatoes, peppers, an eggplant, sweet basil and some swiss chard in the raised beds.

This bed has some tomatoes, the basil, an eggplant and some swiss chard. I think I have more room for another eggplant or two. They are supposed to be dwarf, so they should fit nicely in between the tomatoes.

I added some green peppers, a regular sized eggplant and some swiss chard to this bed. There is still some room for a few more pepper plants that I have to get in the ground soon.

I had to put a rosebush in the rosebed, but I had to move some irises to do it.  This is the wrong time of year to move them, but it had to be done.  I’ll just have to make sure they get the proper sun and water, as well as fertilizer, to help with the shock. 

Our new "rosebed". It now has a Strike it Rich (orange) and a Firefighter (red and fragrant) in it. I still want to get a couple more, but those will wait until next year. To the right of the Firefighter are the remnants of the tulips and daffodils we planted last fall. I'll have to move some of them in order to fit in any more roses.

In order to put the rose where it is now, I had to move a bunch of irises. They are dwarf or miniature. We got them from our friend, Bill, so they are very special. Hopefully moving them at the wrong time of year won't hurt them.

I moved these and realized that this spot is probably going to be too wet, so I have to move them again. They seem to be doing okay despite the shock of the move.

We got a couple of items to put into our blue pot.  They didn’t have tags and I don’t remember what the sign said, but they look pretty good together. 

I have no idea what these are called. They didn't have tags and I didn't write down what was on the sign. I guess that means another trip to the garden center!

I planted five columbine plants in a bare spot on the north side of our garage.  The magic of the tilt of the Earth gives us some sunshine in the afternoon even though it is on the north side of the garage.  It makes it interesting figuring out what can live there.

We got a bunch of different colored Columbine to fill in a hole. The guy on the left is one of our band "The Rolling Toads". They looked good in this bed last year, so they are giving a repeat performance in the same place this year.

Four hours later, I needed to run into town to get some potting soil and some vinca for our red pot.  While I was at the garden center, I grabbed some Japanese Iris, too!

This looked so good last year, we'll try it again this year.

Japanese iris for the raised bed around our Purple Mountain Ash. Fortunately, our "ash" is not a true ash and the Emerald Ash Borer won't eat it.

When I got home, I used the potting soil to plant a tomato in one of those upside-down planters.  The tomato I was going to put in there was too big.  The roots wouldn’t fit through the hole.  So I planted one that Heidi (from Peterson and Tietz) gave me.  It is an heirloom and is called Black Krim.  I have another one in the raised bed and I will put at least one more out at my plot at my friend George’s farm.  I’ll let you know which one does the best. 

This is a first for me. I have never tried the upside down planter, so we will see. Everyone I have asked about it said theirs was blown down in a storm. The day after I took this picture, the hook it was hanging on came out of our bird feeding station tree. Dwayne has since moved it to a very sturdy hook on our shed. (It seems to be fine)

The lady at one of the (many) garden centers I go to mentioned that the plant would do this. It looks pretty strange and will be interesting to see what happens when it gets fruit on it.

At the end of the day I still had things to plant. 

I ran out of time in the day.. and I'm running out of room in the vegetable garden. I may just have to tuck them in amongst the flowers!

That was a project for the next day, or whenever I could get to it.

Dig it!

Posted under General, Spring