Current Conditions
23°F - CLEAR
Vacation preparation. A little preventive medicine in your garden goes a long way in your absence. Deadhead your flowers and buds, pick all your produce and water well. If you have container plants, enlist a neighbor to water them daily.
Turn on the hose at sunrise. It's when water can soak into the ground without evaporating. Early-morning watering also allows foliage to dry through the day, discouraging fungal problems.
Deadhead at dusk. It's a great after-work stress reliever to calmly snap off the dead flowers from your plants. Better than a voodoo doll, it also boosts blooms.
Web slingers. Fall webworms are arriving. Combat these perennial visitors by breaking up their webs and letting the birds have at the pests. Use a broom handle for the webs over your head or a good strong shot of water from your hose.
Prevent West Nile. Work to keep the disease at bay by getting rid of any standing water that can breed mosquitoes. Dump out your birdbaths after rainstorms and clean them frequently.
Mow sparingly. When your lawn is stressed during summer's heat, keep off it as much as possible, mowing only when necessary and at the highest setting.
Prepare to go green. Prepare for fall lawn care by testing your soil now. Pick up a soil test kit at the cooperative extension office or at a local garden center and prepare the sample by mixing random scoops of soil from your lawn. The results will guide your fall fertilizing decisions.
Q & AThe following are questions recently received by the county's Master Gardeners.
Question: There's a large wasp-like bug around my front door. Should I try to kill it?
Answer: No. What you're seeing is a beneficial insect called a cicada killer. Often solitary bees, they have a dark brown abdomen with yellow bands, nesting in underground burrows.
The females hunt and sting cicadas, paralyze them and then drag them back to their nest to lay eggs in them. Once the egg hatches, the young then feed on the cicada. The wasps will capture from two to 10 cicadas before closing up the nest to allow the eggs to hatch.
The wasps are not aggressive and won't sting humans unless they are provoked.
If you must remove them, use a carbaryl dust over their burrow after dark. Rake to disturb the soil. The insect will contact the dust when redigging the hole.
Q: The lower leaves of my tomato plants are dying. What should I do?
A: It sounds like your plant has either septoria leaf spot or early blight. Both can eventually kill the plant.
(168) (139) (107) (67) (63) (60) (46) (27) (26) (15) (12)You should dispose of the lower leaves that are infected and work to improve air circulation around your plants. You can also apply fungicides labeled for use on tomatoes.
Once you're done harvesting, dispose of the plants so you don't harbor the fungus through the winter.
Q: My zucchini plants are collapsing.
A: We suspect squash vine borer. Look for "sawdust" at the base of the plant where the insect is busy destroying your crop.
If your plant is dead, pull it completely out and destroy it. If it is only weakened, you may be able to find the borer and dig it out with a pocketknife.
Unfortunately, once the pest is inside the plant there are no controls other than manual removal. Next year, you can spray an insecticide labeled for the pest at the base of your young plants.
Q: Many of the flowers in my beds seem to have spots on their leaves. Why?
A: Hazy, hot, humid days in summer promote fungal diseases like leaf spot. Generally, they are more cosmetic issues and we recommend you simply put up with them and try to control them with good air circulation and resistant plant selection.
If it's extremely important to have fungus-free plants, you can use a fungicide on young plants to try and control the problem.
For answers to your gardening questions, call the county extension office at 394-6851 and ask to speak with a Penn State Master Gardener. Master Gardeners are available each weekday morning.
Editor's note: This gardening column is written by Daina Savage, Intelligencer Journal correspondent, and Tim Elkner, Lancaster County Horticulture extension agent.
