Photo: Darlene Nicholson- Our largest volunteer in the garden! "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. " ~ Henry Ford "Many hands make light work. " ~ John Heywood Thank you all for showing up and helping make our garden beautiful for GIEI event this Saturday. We could not have said it better than Robin’s quote that follows! “Huge thanks to all of the Derwood volunteers who turned out to help our garden look its glorious best for the Grow It Eat It Open House next Saturday! You all hauled countless wheelbarrows of woodchips to improve the paths, pulled a few more wheelbarrows' worth of weeds, planted most containers, tied up tomatoes and other wandering vines, and just generally did anything that needed doing to make our garden shine. What an honor to be part of this great team!” Garden Reports: Herb Garden:Kathy Tsai This week in the Herb and Fragrance garden, the whole team spent the majority of the morning weeding, cutting back, or grooming our plants. Mother Nature had provided abundant rainfall, so there was no need for watering. Some of the plants in our two large containers were cut back severely (namely, the catnip which had become thin and leggy); the nasturtiums were cleaned up quite a bit which allowed some of the smaller plants, such as the patchouli and purple ruffles basil, to get more air and light. The African blue basils were groomed by removing primarily the oldest, longest flowers as were their companions, the heliotrope. The Dahlias and Shasta daisies were deadheaded, the bee balm thinned out and the last remaining stalks of the larkspur were removed and sent to the compost station. Overall, the garden is ready for the Grow It Eat It open house this coming weekend. Children’s Garden: Susan Kirby The rain in the past week has encouraged everything to grow, particularly the gourd vines, the Cardinal Flower vine on the teepee, and the Hyacinth Bean vines on the tunnel. Of course, they don't always grow in the direction that we want them to go, so time was spent pulling them away from other plants, cutting back, and tying up. We noticed the first appearance of Goblin gourds on the vines, and the cotton plant is doing exceptionally well. Photos: Susan Kirby We are lucky to be right next to the Butterfly Garden because we often share their butterfly visitors. It was particularly exciting to see what appeared to be a brand-new Buckeye resting on a green bean plant. Photo: Susan Kirby I want to send get well wishes to Annie Odette, a member of the class of 2016 who has been part of the Children's Garden team (a small and select group!). Butterfly Garden: Peggy Stanford Oh my, another hot and humid day in the garden. We spent our time trimming back and supporting plants that were damaged by the heavy rain..clearing paths for visitors to the GIEI Open House on Saturday. Of course there was time to watch for and take photos of visiting butterflies. Yellow Swallowtails were out in force. A Buckeye, a Silver-spotted Skipper were also seen. Photo: Peggy Stanford Small Fruit: Patti Oseroff We weeded : ) and are sad to report the decline of the patch of rhubarb that is next to the female russian kiwi. It looks like the soil was too moist. New leaves are coming up so we plan to move and raise it slightly in the fall. Last year we installed a stand of market quality pawpaw tree cultivars outside the perimeter of the demo garden and 2 pawpaws and 1 persimmon tree inside the shade garden. Our trees are 2 years old now. Maturing at 15-20 feet the paw paw is an attractive, pyramidal shaped, easy to grow, small native fruit tree. The pawpaws isan understory tree that will also grow well in full sun - perfect for suburban sized properties. Pawpaw trees have a high level of natural defense compound in their leaves and bark that make them deer resistant, disease and pest free. The nutritious fruit has a pleasant fragrance and a sweet fruity flavor of mango meets banana and pineapple. Pawpaw fruits are the largest edible fruits native to the United States and are the only host of the zebra swallowtail butterfly larvae. We expect our trees to mature and bear fruit in three to five years. Pawpaws are pollinated by flies and need a different cultivar or a common pawpaw to cross-pollinate with. For more information on this fascinating fruit here is a link to an interesting NPR story http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/09/29/140894570/the-pawpaw-foraging-for-americas-forgotten-fruit here is a fact sheet from Virginia Tech http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=155 and USDA http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_astr.pdf 100 Square Foot Garden: Mary Anne Normile Today was beautification day in the garden. In keeping with that, we removed some less-than-beautiful beets (which some small critter had found tasty if not lovely), thinned some very pretty carrots, and removed at least a bucket's worth of decidedly unattractive weeds. Chives and summer savory were given a haircut. The sickly-looking Jupiter bell pepper (don't know what's going on with it) was dispatched to the compost heap, and will be replaced with a couple of peppers (to be named) on Friday set-up and spruce-up day. The harvest was small, in order to keep things looking lush and full for Saturday's Big Show. We did harvest beans, herbs, those lovely Cosmic Purple carrots, a single Fish pepper, and some of the very pretty Gulliver tomatillos. Wood chips were added to paths and everything got a good soaking. Some late-day visitors gave wilting gardeners a preview of the ooh-ing and aah-ing we hear on Open House day, restoring our spirits. Containers: Carol Olson Claude added two self-watering containers to our collection. This simple solution for keeping container gardens from drying out should be of great interest to visitors to the demo garden this Saturday. He filled one with a colorful collection of flowers and transplanted a pepper plant to the other. The other containers were tidied up and the garlic chives were moved to the container with Swiss chard to help fill it out. The tomato plants are doing well. Some little critter evidently agreed as there was a half eaten tomato along side of one container. Lots of green tomatoes are hanging from the vines. Hopefully, they will be turning red by the weekend and, in the meantime, the critters will leave them alone! Photo: Robin Ritterhoff MANNA: Robin Ritterhoff We delivered to Manna 38 pounds of tomatoes, carrots, beets, greens including sweet potato leaves, herbs, and squash. Year-to-date total: 612 pounds. Photo: Robin Ritterhoff KEYHOLE: Robin Ritterhoff The tomatoes & sweet potato vines continue to thrive. We added some Swiss chard and a “Fish” pepper to the area vacated by the late cucumbers. Photo: Robin Ritterhoff BALES: Robin Ritterhoff The mice and voles have continued to dismay us by feasting on the two ground cherry plants, and since last week have finished off a couple of hot pepper plants, the two previously gorgeous zinnias, and the Swiss chard. Luckily the tomato plants in the bales are impressive and productive. But we won’t plant “Orange Banana” again –it is the only variety in the bales with persistent blossom end rot, despite our efforts. Photo: Robin Ritterhoff VEGETABLES: Robin Ritterhoff The good news is that the cucumbers Erica planted a couple of weeks ago are reaching up to the trellises. The bad news is that some hungry bugs have arrived and are causing damage. Most prominently, Carol C. & Linda dumped into soapy water a large number of harlequin bugs and their eggs populating the tronchuda kale, along with a small striped caterpillar that we have not yet identified (I think). Barbara K. found some greatly damaged potatoes, and she plans to research the cause Photo: Robin Ritterhoff : Potatoes affected by?? Photo: Robin Ritterhoff Harlequin Bugs Tomato Beds: Joslyn Read, Dan Ward Hi all, Jr. Bug Sleuth here... Looks like these tomato fruitworms are what Linda discovered in the tomato garden. I don't have her email address to share with her so it would be nice if someone could forward this to her also. BT will control if they are exterior. Best is to find and pick off eggs before hatching. Often associated with nearby corn (I noticed corn was growing nearby outside in the perimeter garden). Tomato Fruitworms: how to identify and control them on tomatoes http://www.tomatodirt.com/tomato-fruitworms.html Photo: Joslyn Read: Tomato fruitworm Bug Report: Darlene Nicholson It's really great to see MG's discovering bugs in the garden and actively pursuing whether they are beneficials or pests! One of the reason bugs are so hard to ID is that they can look more than one way at any given time. If a bug is one that undergoes complete metamorphosis, it can go from egg, to caterpillar looking larva, to cocoon, to pupa, to the actual adult. On the other hand, during incomplete metamorphosis (also called simple metamorphosis ) a bug starts out as an egg, goes through a number of instars or mymphs that look alot like tiny adults growing into actual size. A good example of incomplete metamorphosis are these very early instar Harlequin bugs, (look similar to BSMB early instars). They won't really change their form as much as just grow bigger. These were found trying to eat through this tiny netting to get to the plant. Another simple metamorphosis example is this Squash Bug nymph. Its basic adult shape is here in this instar but color and slight modifications to the shape will occur as it grows to adult form. Great detective work by MG Carol Conrad, who correctly identified this (image below) as a kind of cabbage worm. It is a Cross Striped cabbage worm to be exact, and this is an image of the same that we reported on last season. This is an example of a bug that goes through complete metamorphosis. It will completely change the way it looks throughout its life, making it very hard to ID in its different forms. A couple of the bugs in the image below were found in the garden on Tuesday and as it turns out, that's a GOOD thing! It's a kind of stink bug called, a spined soldier bug. It's a beneficial and you can read all about it and other varieties of stink bugs in this article I got from HGIC's, Ask An Expert. http://www2.ca.uky.edu/entomology/critter/stinkbug.asp Closing Remarks: Lily and Bill With the weeding of our neighbors plots, we have been battling many invaders. Please be on the lookout for more than usual bugs and have your bucket with soapy water on the ready. Photo: Robin Ritterhoff: Harlequin bugs
Thanks all for the huge effort to make the garden beautiful for our big event on Saturday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorOur weekly reports are a joint effort of all garden leads
|