Problems in the Garden This Week

 COME ON RAIN!  It’s raining right now, and thank goodness it is!  Folks, it is dry.  I mean really dry (unless you were some of the fortunate ones to get the recent sweep thru showers).  And what bugs me are folks saying that they’re not watering right now, because of all the rain we’ve had!  And the key word here is “had”.  Please don’t be fooled by pass thru showers or the timely rains we had several weeks ago.  Plants are extremely dry right now, especially those planted within the past 2 years.  If you have container grown trees, planted within the past 2 years, you must – one more time – you must make sure that you are watering the immediate root ball first, then worry about the soil around the root ball and the existing soil beyond that.  Soaker hoses, stationary sprinklers turned on low, slow dripping garden hose at the base of the plant, Gator bags, Ross Root feeders – I don’t care what your choice of watering weapon is, use it and use it right.  Deep thorough soakings, and make sure the immediate root ball is getting soaked.  Not sure if it’s dry or not?  Get a soil knife or very sturdy trowel and dig into the soil.  Then you’ll know for sure.  After these showers move thru, check the soil and see how much good deep rain penetration your lawn / garden / plants received.  Good chance your plants may still be thirsty.  If so, join them for a drink!

 Still a fairly easy summer in the yardboy’s small garden as far as insects and diseases.  I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see a late driller (carpenter bee) in our deck hand rail this past weekend.  And Japanese beetles have been nil – nada – nothing!  I’m loving that.  But I do have one little critter that I knew was up to something.  On Saturday, a house wren hopped up on the handrail and stared at me while I was looking out the back door.  I knew what he was checking out, and sure enough, yesterday I noticed a nice big nest in our Mandevilla hanging basket.  (We have one in a hanging basket which vines up over my wife’s garden swing lattice.)  Those big leaves make the perfect covering for their nest.  So we will water sparingly until they get the family hatched and moved on.  And with the cooler temps, I’ve had the back door open a lot, which last night I noticed a few granddaddy long legs have made their way into the house.  I toss them out, but swear they run back in quicker than I can shut the door!

 Buggy Joe Boggs Report – This week, BJB (OSU Extension) is reporting extreme dryness at the Boggs mansion (Joe said he would even take some extreme weather just to get some rainfall!), a report of tomatoes wilting not from dryness, viruses etc, but from being planted within 20 feet of a Black Walnut, which is toxic to tomato plants (and many others),  still watching for reports of late blight on tomatoes, yellow-necked caterpillars feeding on a wide array of trees (I think we had a kid in school we called “yellowneck”), bed bugs being diagnosed in many homes around the state, a recluse spider was identified from a rail yard in northern Ohio (probably hitching a ride to Cleveland), mums with scorch on the leaves, apple scab and frog eyed leaf spot on apple leaves, pearleaf blister mites on, yes you guessed it, pear leaves, brown rot causing fruit to deteriorate on plums, black root rot on hollies, powdery mildew on a host of different plants, anthracnose on maples, leaf spot on maples, common stag beetles now making guest appearances and scaring folks to death (they have those massive pinchers out front), planthoppers hopping around, cypress twig galls starting to appear (that takes a lot of gall to do that!), chiggers doing a nice job keeping folks itching as well as keeping the Calamine lotion manufacturers in business, sod webworm adult populations going down which means caterpillars will be showing up shortly, spider webs starting to increase in numbers, Septoria leaf spot on tomatoes having gardeners worried they may have the dreaded ‘late blight’, and last but not least, folks are now, finally, starting to see bagworms that we’ve been warning about for months, on their evergreens as they (the evergreens, not the folks) begin to have disappearing needles and needles turning brown!  If only they had listened to me earlier, found those silly bagworms before major damages, and sprayed with Captain Jack’s Deadbug Brew.  But no-o-o-o-o.  Oh well, you can still spray with Captain Jacks to control them, so get going!  

Catch the Buggy Joe Boggs Report every Saturday at 8:42am on 55KRC The Talk Station.

 [Would a fly without wings be called a walk?]