To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
Ecc. 3:1
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
Ecc. 3:1
Add stakes to every plant in the vegetable garden that might need them. Tomatoes are the obvious choice, but it’s also good to give pepper plants support. Their stems tend to be brittle, and once peppers have formed, the extra weight can lead to broken branches during summer storms. I had already put tomato cages around my tomato plants, but they were beginning to tilt from the weight of the vines so I put wooden stakes on the sides of the cages and tied them on with twine. Hopefully that will keep them upright!
One of the best tools you can use in your garden is mulch. It moderates soil temperatures, slows water evaporation from the soil, shades plant roots and helps suppress weeds. Early summer isn’t too late to add mulch to your garden. In fact, it’s never too late. How thick should mulch be? When using shredded bark, a 2-inch-thick layer will do the trick in most areas. In warmest zones where mulch decomposes quickly, a 3-inch layer is helpful.
Japanese beetles love all the tender new leaves and lush petals in a June garden. One of the easiest ways to deal with these munching machines is to knock the beetles into a container of soapy water. Wear gloves if you don’t want to touch the hard-shelled beetles. Avoid putting traps out, or you may beckon all the beetles in the neighborhood to your yard.
Refresh cool-season container gardens with annuals that thrive when the mercury climbs. Good choices include lantana, verbena, petunia, million bells, marigold, angelonia — there are so many amazing choices in an absolute crayon box worth of colors.
Walk through your flower garden at least twice a week with a pair of clippers and a bucket, cutting off faded or dead blooms. This process is called “deadheading,” and it’s one of the secrets to a garden packed with flower power. Deadheading encourages many plants to form more flower buds and helps prevent dying petals from harboring insects or disease.
HGTV Gardens and Outdoors
Who doesn't love a juicy tomato fresh from the garden? But, easier said than done. Tomatoes can have any number of problems. Here are some remedies to some of the more common tomato maladies.
Those dark, sunken spots on the bottom of tomatoes are blossom end rot. It's so common that in tomato circles they call it BER for short. It's not a disease but a symptom of calcium deficiency and occurs due to uneven watering (wet-dry cycles in soil), too-high nitrogen or root damage. You can eat tomatoes with BER — just cut the bottoms off. For a quick fix, treat plants with a calcium spray for BER. Keep soil consistently moist; using mulch helps. Test soil when tomato harvest ends. Amend as needed. …putting aspirin, tums, etc. in soil when planting next year.
When tomato plants look healthy and flowers appear but drop without setting fruit, it's usually not your fault. Blame this one on the weather. When day temperatures linger around 85 F to 90 F and nights stay above 75 F, tomato flower pollen becomes unviable. Once the hot spell passes, flower pollination will resume and tomatoes will form. Until then keep plants well-watered and fertilized, so they're ready to jump back into production.
A cracked tomato is another sign of uneven water supply. A heavy downpour that soaks soil can result in roots sending huge amounts of water to ripening tomatoes — so much so that they pop their skins. Cracked fruit is edible, but the cracks are more susceptible to mold. Eat ripe, cracked tomatoes before ones with smooth skin. Prevent the condition by mulching soil and watering tomatoes deeply twice a week, instead of giving plants a little water every day. When heavy rainfall is in the forecast, pick tomatoes that are almost fully colored.
Small holes in tomatoes are usually caused by slugs. The problem is, once slugs open a hole, the tomato weeps juice, and soon other critters join the party, like pill bugs, fruit flies and wasps. The wound in the fruit also invites early decay and mold. Slugs attack low-hanging fruit first, but they also slime their way up tomato vines and supports. Research slug treatments and adopt several strategies to deal with them. When tomato season is done, before frost, continue to use slug treatments to kill adult slugs before they lay eggs.
Hot summer sun can burn tomatoes, causing a condition known as sunscald. It's not much different from a sunburn on your skin. Sunscald results in a white patch that has very thin skin. The flesh beneath doesn't taste good. The problem occurs when there aren't enough leaves to shade fruit. Staking tomatoes or using cages helps leaves to dangle and cover fruit. Use care when pruning tomato leaves. Make sure you don't remove all the leaves that shade ripening tomatoes.
Finding holes in leaves and missing leaves? You likely have a tomato hornworm at work. These large green worms can gobble a mature tomato plant almost overnight. The worms hide under leaves during the daytime. Get rid of them by visiting your tomato patch at night, when they come out to feed. Knock worms into a container of soapy water.
Dark spots on leaves with concentric rings followed by yellowing between spots are a sign of early blight, a tomato disease caused by a fungus. It occurs on lower leaves first; spots can also appear on stems. Control this blight by spraying plants with fungicide. Remove all fallen leaves and destroy them; do not add them to your compost. To prevent disease spread, avoid getting water on leaves and don't work with plants when they're wet. Early blight is contagious and winters over on plant debris. Destroy — do not compost — infected plants.
Late blight is another fungus disease on tomatoes, and it appears as water-soaked spots on leaves, fruits and stems. It's a death sentence once it attacks a plant and usually spreads quickly to other plants. Track the disease spread by region online, and start treating your plants with fungicide when it occurs in your area. Destroy infected leaves and plants; do not compost them. To help prevent the disease, space tomato plants so they have good air circulation and avoid overhead watering.
When your tomato plants are all leaves and no flowers, there's likely too much nitrogen in the soil. Nitrogen fuels leafy growth, and when it's abundant, your plants will have lush growth with dark green leaves. Your soil likely lacks phosphorus, which helps trigger flowering and fruit formation. Tomatoes are heavy feeders and benefit from receiving specialized tomato fertilizer, which is usually higher in phosphorous (the middle number on the fertilizer bag). It might read something like 2-3-1.
From What’s Wrong with My Tomato? By Julie Marens Forney, HGTV
