LEFT: ‘Striped Roman’ tomato with tomato late blight on fruit and foliage. RIGHT: Tomato late blight lesion on ‘Striped Roman’ tomato. Photos by Jessie Keith
Tomatoes with oily patches and plants with stem lesions and browning leaves – it’s not what a tomato grower wants to see because these are the telltale signs and symptoms of late blight (Phytophthora infestans). Most commonly known for causing the Irish Potato Famine, late blight is spread by a fungus-like pathogen that survives and overwinters on infected plant material. Though it kills tomatoes more slowly than potatoes, it is equally lethal and destroys tomato fruits.
Tomato late blight is a disease that needs a live host plant from year to year, so several methods can be used to avoid it and control its spread if discovered. The first step is to plant healthy plants from reliable growers or seed suppliers. (Nothing is worse than being sold diseased plants!) In the garden, avoid moist soil by planting tomatoes in well-drained, aerated, raised beds and keep plants healthy and vigorous by feeding them with a tomato & vegetable fertilizer. It also helps to encourage air-flow by spacing plants well and keeping them pruned. Rotating crops on a three year cycle will also help keep soil disease-free. Finally, scout for infected plants and immediately remove any infected plant material far away from the garden and compost bin. Be diligent and you can beat late blight.
For glowing garden color, nothing beats that old standby, the Petunia. Why? Petunias, and the closely related Calibrachoa, are tough, pretty, and thrive in containers and sunny flower beds. And, for designing with annual color there’s no better choice. Happy plants bloom nonstop and come in a broad array of exciting colors — from blue to magenta and even green! The only drawback is how they dwindle in mid- to late-summer if not properly maintained.
After an early- to mid-season explosion of color, they start to look worn and peter out as the dog days of summer hit — especially container-grown plants. But, you can stop this floral decline before it begins. A few simple steps will ensure top petunia performance well into autumn.
STEP 1: Start Right
Remove damaged and spent flowers to keep plants looking fresh and attractive.
First, start big and plant right. For best success, purchase starts as larger vigorous plants in 3 to 4-inch pots, rather than small, needy plugs, or meager seed-grown specimens. This will provide you with more vigorous, prettier plants faster.
Next, be particular about amendments or container mix. If your planting beds need a boost, amend with Black Gold® Earthworm Castings or Garden Compost. Both will fortify soil and yield bigger, happier bedding plants. Containers should be filled with a light potting mix that is porous, yet moist enough to be easily irrigated. Black Gold® Natural and Organic Potting Soil Plus Fertilizer is a top-notch choice. (Bagged mixes of lesser quality are heavily pre-wetted, harder to handle, and have less aeration.) You can also increase the water-holding capacity of any medium by adding a three to one ratio of Just Coir.
Calibrachoa Superbells Dreamsicle is a warm-hued variety that thrives in sun.
Choosing the right fertilizer is essential. High phosphorus fertilizer specialized to promote blooming and rooting encourages faster root development for healthier plants and more flowers. Choose an OMRI Listed fertilizer approved for organic gardening. For best results, fertilize containers every 5 to 6 weeks.
It is generally stated that petunias and Calibrachoa need full sun for best blooming, but they will flower nearly as well in partial sun, especially where summers are very hot and humid. Overall, 6 hours of direct sunlight will suffice. Any less will yield plants that are leggy and flower poorly.
STEP 2: Maintain, Prune, Maintain!
Prune back leggy stems. The end product may have a clipped look but never fear; in a week or so they’ll branch out again.
Consistent care and a midsummer pruning are essential to keeping petunias blooming vigorously up to frost. Regular water is crucial — especially for container specimens. Just one day of water missed can dry up a plant and leave it looking poor for weeks until nurtured back to health. During hot, dry spells twice daily watering may even be needed. Before watering, check by feeling the soil to the depth of two inches—if it feels barely moist to dry, it’s time to water again.
Calibrachoa, such as Superbells Chiffon Yellow, require little to no pruning, unlike most petunias.
Petunias need a midseason chop to bounce back to their early summer glory (ground cover petunias, like those in the Wave™ series, are an exception). Cut them back considerably by ¾ in mid-July to keep them from developing old, bloomless, leggy stems. Unlike petunias, Calibrachoa doesn’t require midsummer pruning unless they begin to look ungainly and then only a light trim is required. Follow up by giving pruned plants a boost of fertilizer, a good drink, and within a couple of weeks, they will burst forth again in glorious bloom.
Enjoy Into Fall
When it’s time to plant potted mums, asters, ornamental peppers, and colorful kales, I always work them in and around pre-existing petunia and Calibrachoa plantings. Nothing’s prettier than a raspberry red and pink Supertunia® Raspberry Blast petunia weaving itself among fall standards like steely ‘Winterbor’ kale and ivory chrysanthemums. Beautiful!
Think it’s too late to sow easy cut flowers for fall? It’s not. Fast and easy bloomers like cosmos, zinnias, cornflowers and compact sunflowers still have plenty of time to reach flowering and shine before frosts take them for the season. Early August is the ideal time for planting fall cut-flowers. Sow them directly into beds with rich, friable soil and gently cover with a light sprinkle of Black Gold Seedling Mix to a depth no greater than ¼ of an inch. This will ensure they get light, moist cover and germinate better. By late September you should be ready to cut and arrange your colorful new blooms.
Root crops such as ‘Lunar White’ carrots will be long, straight, and easy to pull when grown in your newly double dug beds.
Root crops grow best in soil that is as fertile and deep as possible. Higher soil organic matter and tilth will yield longer, straighter carrots, heftier rutabagas and prettier parsnips. Double digging is the best technique to maximize bed depth, and early spring or midsummer are great times to prep your beds for spring or fall root crops.
The best way to maximize soil depth and quality is through double digging and ample amendment with lots of organic matter. Double digging is the process of digging deeply to ensure soil is light and porous down deep. Begin by designating a reasonable area to dig. Then with a good, sharp spade, remove the top 8 to 10 inches of soil and place it on a tarp so it can be easily returned to the garden. For the “double” stage of digging, use a hefty garden fork to work up the soil as deeply as possible along the floor of the garden where the soil was removed.
1) Trench double digging is a faster, less arduous method of double digging. Just double dig a trench where you want to plant. 2) All double-dug soil should be friable, clump-free and amendments thoroughly worked in. 3) Double dug bed spaces will be slightly raised upon completion and should be easy to dig deeply into.
Once light and worked up, add a half and half mix of Black Gold Garden Soil and Black Gold Garden Compost Blend—one bag each for around a 5’ x 5’ garden area. Finally, work in additional bags of soil builder and compost at the same ratio into the soil on the tarp and add it back into your double dug garden.
This method is a lot of work but yields superb root vegetables for years to come. Follow up by planting rows of your favorite fall root crops, like carrots, daikon radishes, rutabagas, beets, and parsnips, and cover the seed lightly with Black Gold Seedling Mix before watering in.
1) Kids enjoy helping harvest root vegetables and eat them too. 2) Long, straight ‘Kinko’ Carrots harvested directly from the fall garden.
Soil, potting medium or compost, as long as it’s dirty, kids love to play in it. And that’s a good thing. Researchers from Bristol University and University College London discovered that natural “friendly” bacteria in the soil can actually boost the mood as effectively as an anti-depressant. More research at the Sage Colleges of Troy, New York suggests that exposure to certain soil bacteria may even increase learning capabilities. Pretty cool! Then there’s the satisfying feel of squishy soil between the fingers and toes – playing in the dirt is fun.
(How many parents out there didn’t make mud pies as children at least once?)
To keep dirt play as tidy as possible at my house, I created a designated soil play area complete with little pans, wooden spoons and watering cans for soil cookery. It also helps to have an area to hose off muddy kids before entering the house and a mud room for the removal of badly-soiled clothes. As funny as it sounds, the kids like to play with different soil types as well as sand. Coco peat pies are very popular. Playing in the dirt is not something we do every day, but it is nice to let the kids break free and play in the dirt once in a while.
Plant cuttings can turn one plant into five in just two weeks. And some bedding favorites are so easy to root, they are big money savers for those in the know. For instance, I never buy more than a few Coleus, Salvia, Lysimachia congestiflora or Agastache. A couple plants, some shears, seedling mix, rooting hormone and care are all that’s needed for loads more garden plants. (For some bedding plants, like coleus, rooting hormone is not even necessary.)
Start with a big, healthy plant — the bigger the plant, the larger the cuttings. Then fill clean, 4-inch pots or spacious seedling trays with Black Gold Seedling Mix. Lightly moisten the mix with clean water and dibble holes in the medium to hold the cuttings. Using clean, sharp shears, take 5 to 6 inch cuttings from the parent plants. Gently remove foliage from the bottom two inches of the cuttings and place them upright, like cut flowers, in a glass of cool, clean water. Before placing them in the seedling mix, dip the cuttings in powdered rooting hormone. Cutting pots should be kept in a spot with diffuse bright light and kept evenly moist, not wet. In a week or two they should have their own roots and be ready to plant wherever more summer color is needed!
Learning to grow gourds is fun! Nothing beats beautiful, heat-tolerant, hard-skinned gourds (Lagenaria siceraria) for fall show and decorating. Growing them is fun and easy to do! They come in all shapes and sizes and are top notch garden plants for kids. In the fall they look beautiful in festive Halloween and Thanksgiving displays and for winter they can be dried and carved into everything from lidded containers to birdhouses or luminaries.
Plant these annual vines in spring after the threat of frost has passed, and provide full sun and well-drained soil fortified with a little all-purpose fertilizer for good gourd production. When temperatures heat up, the vines will start to spread, twine and ramble, so be sure to provide a strong trellis for them.
Lantana camara ‘Piñata’ is one of several heat and drought tolerant ornamentals for summer long color.
Water-needy container plants often require twice-daily watering in summer’s heat, so it saves time and water to plant tougher, more water-efficient ornamentals. My top five water saving container plants for effortless color are lantana (Lantana camera), narrowleaf zinnia (Zinnia angustifolia), Dichondra Silver Falls™, moss rose (Portulaca), and cigar plant (Cuphea ignea). (All of these beauties also attract pollinators!) Once established, they shine in the heat and can manage with less water. Two more tips towards less container watering: Plant in larger containers that give roots more room to grow, and use a water-holding growing medium like Black Gold® Waterhold Cocoblend.
The author’s daughter, Franziska, planting ever-bearing ‘Alexandria’ and ‘Temptation’ strawberries.
Strawberries have a simple beauty and appeal not lost on children. Whether grown in containers, mounds, or patches, they’re sure to please. For kids, ever-bearing varieties that produce intermittent berries all season are best.
This spring, my oldest daughter and I created a strawberry mound with some spare bricks and a little ingenuity. We amended the mound with Black Gold Garden Compost Blend and fertilized our berries with organic fertilizer for small fruits. Then let the berries begin!
A potted garden with a ‘Gold Heart’ bleeding heart as the focal point of this spring container planting.
Potted gardens add character and definition to porch and patio spaces. Spring compositions are the most joyous being the first plantings of the season, so make them memorable with mix-and-match bulbs and perennials. Contrast plant colors, textures and heights as well as creating pleasing potted landscapes with a selection of different containers. Fertilize with organic fertilizer formulated for flowers for best blooming results.
