To a Butterfly~ William WordsworthI 've watched you now a full half-hour; Self-poised upon that yellow flower And, little Butterfly! Indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless! — not frozen seas More motionless! and then What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again! Another beautiful day at Derwood. It was an exciting day with the first Monarch caterpillar sighting! Lots of bugs, and beauty this week! We found ourselves just observing nature...and our beautiful surroundings.. Garden Reports: Children’s Garden: Susan Kirby The Children's Garden Cat has been keeping a close eye on the catnip growing nearby. The local bees are happy to work their pollinating magic under Garden Cat's watchful eye. Meanwhile, the human gardeners are looking forward to seeing new seedlings of sunflowers and gourds. The dry weather has slowed germination, and we hope for more moisture in the coming week. This week was Sally Reynold's last day in the Children's Garden. Sally and her husband are moving to West Virginia where she hopes to find a group of like-minded and welcoming Master Gardeners. I greatly appreciated the warm welcome that she gave me last year when I was an intern. Those of us who have worked with her will miss her very much. Compost Central: Denny May The compost crew this week consisted of Ephraim, Denny and Larry. We currently have two large bins in the final stage of decomposition, one food waste bin and one garden waste bin. We charged and turned an additional food waste bin and a garden waste bin. In addition, we charged and turned two Montgomery County Geobins, one each of food waste and garden waste. Finally, we charged and mildly turned our black plastic container containing food waste and leaves. This little sucker has surprised us all by maintaining high temperatures over two weeks even though it's not that large and doesn't get a full turn. We're all anxious to see what the end result of this container will be. We got some wonderful help from an mg whose name we were not together enough to obtain (Tina), but she moved our leaf pile closer to the bins and out of the field area. She was an awesome worker, and if she comes back next week, we'll definitely get her name and officially welcome her into the Compost Central Club. Herb Garden: Kathy Tsai This week's work day was on the leisurely side, with another beautiful day to enjoy. Most of our activity centered on watering and weeding; many areas of the Herb and Fragrance section were quite dry. We cut back on the Russian Sage and the apple mint to allow the nicotiana plants to get more sun. One of the nicotiana is blooming, but the others are still on the smaller side due to being shaded by the taller sage and mint. They should now start flowering with the increased sunlight. The Knockout roses were dead-headed a bit; their bright red blooms are a nice contrast to the intense blue of the larkspur which are now beginning to bloom. Speaking of blue, the heliotrope and the African blue basil plants are starting to fill out and get some height, and our three chocolate-scented daisies have almost doubled in size from last week. We had a few Demo Garden staff stop by to "admire" the 7-foot lovage. Finally, I was personally happy to see a pair of house wrens flying in and out of the small hanging birdhouse in the rear of the garden, obviously feeding some young ones inside. The human activity didn't seem to bother them in the least. They had their job to do and we had ours; all is well in the garden. Conservation Garden: Linda Davis Although rather inconspicuous at the moment, our groundcover "library" under the winterberry bushes is shaping up nicely, having been expertly weeded and labeled and mulched previously. This week we planted Goldenstar (Chrysogonum virginianum), kindly donated by Kathleen from the fragrance garden crew, near the pond. This will add one more native species to our groundcover library. Butterfly Garden: Peggy Stanford Another beautiful day in the Butterfly Garden. Due to 10 or more days without rain and several days of sustained wind things are a little dry....a good watering was in order. More Zinnias were planted and weeds were pulled. The "common" milkweed is exceptional this year and could bring us lots of Monarchs. Today we observed a Monarch caterpillar on the common milkweed and a beautiful Great Spangled Fritillary Butterfly floated through the garden. 100 Square Foot Garden: Linda Taveira- Da Silva Overall the garden looked healthy and growing well despite lack of rainfall in the recent days. Mr. Rabbit is currently away on vacation but Mr. Potato beetle visited our tomatillo plants this week and had a nice brunch or lunch on our dime. Hopefully the plants gave him the brushoff and will recover. This week we pulled all of our glorious, but tough lettuce and flowering arugula. We harvested a ton (almost) of kale and collards. Thanks to the pole peas we learned that if you have a heavy hand you must thin. We had a very thick crop of pea green foliage but with only some flowers and some peas in a crowded space. We replaced them with a little less of Kentucky Wonder and purple pod pole beans. Our broccoli did us proud and Giant and Safeway now have some local competition. The bush beans moved right in and more Bulls Blood Beets were also planted. Summer squash, Gold Rush and Early Yellow Crookneck were added to the garden. Our vining cucumbers are looking a little too lime green, so we took the precaution of adding extra compost and planted Market More 76 cucumber seeds in between the plants. We re-spaced some of the basil and dwarf tomato plants to give them some growing room, weeded, watered and added compost here and there. Therapeutic Flower Beds: Bob Loesche All continues to thrive in the TH beds. The Larkspur's impressive show of tall, delicate blue flowers goes on; the yarrow is busting out in beautiful shades of yellow, pink, and white; and the Lavender is in glorious deep blue/purple. The Zinnias and Coneflowers are beginning to bloom now, and all the other plants continue to hold forth the promise of a colorful show throughout the summer. Small Fruits: Patty Oseroff Today we pruned (tamed) the Concord grape to eliminate some fungal spots on stem and leaves. The pruning will allow more airflow. The currants were also pruned back. The female Siberian kiwi needed water and a little more attention. The male kiwi got a new trellis and the female will get a matching one soon. We put bigger cages around the paw paws that are looking good and growing. We plan to use a cover crop of buckwheat to cool and enrich the copse, so we will need a lot of help next week weeding, preparing and planting the area. We gave up on the persimmon which was dead above the graft. The rhubarb in the pawpaw copse was removed because they were not doing well, maybe they not getting enough water. The blackberries look super, however the black raspberries are small and disappointing. Edibles: Erica Smith We continued harvesting spring crops (lettuce, kale, peas, cress and mesclun mix, herbs) as well as turnips and watched the summer crops grow. With a few exceptions (complete lack of germination of Masai beans in the salad table and bitter gourd on the pepper bed trellis) these are all coming along well. Only a few pests were spotted - three-lined potato beetles on tomatillo, but still no Colorado potato beetles on potatoes - one lone cucumber beetle waiting for its favorite food to mature - so we're just continuing to monitor. Two sweet potatoes were planted in containers (one per pot, to give them lots of room) and a new Georgia Jet replaced one that was struggling. We've decided that all our sweet potato slips should be home-grown next year, since that method provides much healthier plants than buying through the mail or from local stores. It's easy to start your own from tubers. Next week we'll need to do a bit more weeding and mulching, but the garden looks great - thanks for all the hard work. We'll also hope next week for some real heads on cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage - it's time to move on and use those beds for a second bush bean crop and a space for winter squash. Tomatoes: Dan Ward The tomato bed looks in great shape, the plants are healthy and growing well. The Principe in the left row looked like it wasn't going to make it a few weeks ago but has made a nice rebound. We had a great discussion on pruning and removing suckers, and why it's important. Good questions were asked. We are also seeing the first sighting of Septoria fungal infection. This disease is pretty easily identified with small brown spots on the leaves which are surrounded by a yellow halo. If seen the best thing to do is to remove the branch immediately and destroy them. Do not compost. We plan to use copper based fungicide based on the experience of many years of repeated bad cases of early blight. This year might actually be a little better since the Rain Event of May happened before we put the plants in - but we want to treat it before it rears its ugly head. It spreads from the lower older leaves to the younger leaves at the top. For more information, please read Grow It Eat It report: http://extension.umd.edu/growit/early-blight-vegetables Pest of the Week in the Tomato Section: Three-lined Potato Bug Larvae by Joslyn Reed These larvae have done some real damage to our tomatillos in the last week. While the damage initially looked like that from flea beetles, we noticed that underneath the leaves there were what looked like small piles of bird poop. Pretty tough to do upside down though. On closer inspection, these were larvae covered with a goopy substance that turns out is their own poop. Totally disgusting! According to the University of New Hampshire, Ag Extension, “[t]hey are uncommon on potato, rare on tomato, but very common on tomatillo”. Both the larvae and the adults chew on the leaves. There are often two generations of these little gems each summer two months or so apart, so once we get through this gen, we will need to get ready for the next round. Controls: Row covers can help. Adults, eggs, and larvae are easy to handpick. Pesticide ingredients that may be labeled and effective reportedly include carbaryl, permethrin, bifenthrin, neem, pyrethrins (not likely to be effective in very low concentrations), and soaps. For pictures and more information see Bug report by Darlene below. MANNA: Robin Ritterhoff 56 pounds of greens, onions, turnips and other. Our year-to-date total is now 254 pounds. KEYHOLE: Robin Ritterhoff We planted two more bush cucumbers, one in the inner part of the bed and the other in the outer ring (whose purpose is to insulate and maintain moisture in the central part of the bed, which is not drip-irrigated). While we found the inner part of the bed reasonably moist, the outer ring is dryer. By planting two of the same variety of seedling, we hope to compare how well they fare. We had planted pre-soaked beans in the outer ring two weeks ago, and none came up, perhaps because of the hot, dry weather. BALES: Robin Ritterhoff Plants in the bales appear to be flourishing, particularly the tomatoes. We put into practice today’s training on removing suckers, and followed Dan’s advice on tying the tomato stems to the bamboo supports installed a couple of weeks ago. CONTAINERS: Robin Ritterhoff The vegetables in the containers are doing well. The tomatoes are taking off and the beautiful plants in the regional containers could inspire a visitor to aspire to try cooking new flavor combinations. BUG REPORT :Darlene Nicholson I get that bugs aren't everyone's idea of fun reading. Some of the images can make anyone, except dedicated entomologists, extremely squeamish. As Master Gardeners supporting the ideology of IPM or organic gardening, we really need to make some kind of effort to at least know the difference between the helpful bugs versus the really destructive ones. Bugs are an integral part of any garden environment. We are fortunate at Derwood to be exposed to many kinds of beneficials. We get to see them in person!! You get to take that firsthand knowledge to plant clinics, MG events, and even share it with your neighbors. Each week I post images directly from the Derwood Demo Garden to let you know what is out and about in the garden you work in. Take a minute to look at the images each week and see if you can find some of them in the garden. If you learn just one bug a week, during the season you will have learned at least 25 bugs! This week was an extremely busy bug week. I was very happy to finally spot a green Lacewing. The larvae prey upon a wide variety of small insects including mealybugs, thrips, mites, whiteflies, aphids, small caterpillars, leafhoppers, and insect eggs. Sorry for the ethereal look of the photo but that was as close as I could get without it flying away. Another great find was an Ichneumonid Wasp. This one was very difficult to identify. It went through several entomologists before they concluded on Ichneumonid (Agonocryptus chichimecus discoidaloides). Try to say that 3 times fast. I'm still working on saying it correctly the first time. At any rate, it's part of a family of parasitic wasps. They lay their eggs inside or on top of other insects and develop by feeding on their host’s tissue, resulting in the eventual death of the host. Apparently they aren't a major stinging threat, as this one is sitting quietly on Maria's arm. We also experienced our first sighting of a Monarch caterpillar in the butterfly garden on a milkweed plant! What are the odds? Now for the bad news. We have been seeing more Three-lined Potato Beetle damage on potatoes and tomatillo plants. I posted that image a couple of weeks ago, but here it is again. Please put it in the soapy water container if you see it. The first image is the adult. The second shows the eggs, and the third, really disgusting one is the larva. The strange clump on its back contains its own droppings that are supposed to divert other predators. I think it diverts a lot of MG's from dealing with them. Dip the leaf containing them in soapy water or discard entire leaf if not detrimental to plant. The last sighting from Tuesday is a squash bug. It was found on a cucumber plant in the therapeutic garden. Squash bugs have piercing-sucking mouthparts that they use to suck the sap out of leaves. Their feeding causes yellow spots that eventually turn brown. The feeding also disrupts the flow of water and nutrients, which can cause wilting. This insect can cause lots of damage to the cucurbit family, especially on young plants. Stay vigilant and when you see the destructive bugs, please make an effort to catch and destroy them.
Closing Comments: Lily and Bill More impromptu tours as 2 mothers and their 4 daughters enjoyed the butterfly, children's, therapeutic and fragrance gardens Tuesday. Hope you get a chance to walk through the Shade Garden as that team are such fabulous gardeners - the wandering paths present fun gardening surprises throughout. Thanks Dan for doing our ten at ten this week on how to trim tomatoes. Next week’s ten at ten will be Joe Ginther on our irrigation system that’s up and running now. We are still trying to recruit volunteers for the Grow It Eat It event on Saturday August 6th. Please contact Robin Ritterhoff if you want to volunteer. Prepare for out hat day on June 28th! Wear whatever interesting hat you have! It should be a fun work day. You have two weeks to prepare! See you all next Tuesday!
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