Rain or shine, our gardens are now heading into the home stretch with tomatoes, beans, squash, and peppers leading the way!  Dry weather has been tough on some veggies and flowers this summer, so mulch and extra watering is required.  Good news is that weeds grow slower and the lawn needs less mowing!  Tomatoes and peppers are really sub-tropical plants and don’t know that winter is coming so they are still trying to grow.  We know better and there are several things we can do right now to get the most out of them.  It’s also a good time to get a soil test so you know what is needed for next year.  Late summer pests & diseases are appearing too so let’s be alert.

Late Season Tomato care.  August & September conditions generally are good for a plant’s growth, as well as some plant diseases.  Plant diseases can’t be cured, only prevented and managed.  What should you do?  Most important is disease resistant varietal selection, but that’s a discussion for January when we select our seeds.

Disease prevention is the most effective strategy.  Healthy plants can resist pests and diseases and healthy soil is the best way to have strong, healthy plants.  Of course, healthy plants are more nutritious, so they contribute to our own good health too.  Homemade compost supplemented with minerals like phosphate, calcium, and potassium, when indicated by a soil test (see below), are a great way to build healthy soil and reduce disease problems.

If your garden plants seem to be losing their vigor (slow growth, yellowed leaves, etc.), it’s time to give them a nutritional boost.  Foliar feeding is quickly ingested and can extend the production of tired tomatoes, summer & winter squash, cucumbers, peppers, and many flowers that have been using up the nutrients from the soil all summer.  Fish emulsion (available at most garden centers and online as a liquid concentrate) is a great foliar fertilizer, best applied in the morning (when leaf pores, stomata, are open and can take in the food) and when no rain is expected.  Spray it on with a tank sprayer or sprinkle it on with a watering can with a sprinkler head.

You can also apply a commercial liquid organic fertilizer when watering.  Got compost?  Make a simple “compost tea” with a shovel-full of mature compost in a 5 gallon bucket and fill with water.  Mix it well and repeat mixing a couple times for a day before watering your plants with this healthy probiotic tea.  This provides a great boost of beneficial soil microbes plus some nutrients to feed your plants.  Do not try to save it for more than a day or two, it can get pretty “ripe”!

Our next job is to regularly remove all diseased or yellowing leaves/branches from plants.  An infected leaf can produce millions of spores that quickly spread over the surface of healthy leaves as well as inside the plant via sap.  Cut them off and discard away from the garden, not in your compost.  Continue to pinch off “suckers” and harvest ripe tomatoes, peppers, cukes, etc. so the plant’s strength can go to new fruits. 

Finally, because it takes 50-60 days for a tomato blossom to grow into a ripening fruit, blossoms forming after Sept. 1 will not yield usable tomatoes but will take valuable energy away from the plant.  Best practice is to snip off all newly formed blossoms from now forward.  Sad thing to do but it will direct more energy into the fruits already on the plant.  Also, if your plants have outgrown their supports then cut off the terminal tips to stop excessive growth at the top.

Got Beans?  Green beans are easy to grow and give an abundant crop, sometimes too abundant.  Like zucchini (see previous article) we can be creative in using our beans.  Here is our favorite recipe for the very popular Dilly Beans:

Dilly Beans

These dilly beans can be refrigerated for several weeks or canned for longer storage.

Makes: 8 pint jars

4 lbs. green beans, washed, topped and tailed

3 Tbsp dill seed

1 -1/2 Tbsp black peppercorns

1 large head of garlic, broken up into cloves, peeled and sliced thinly

6 cups distilled white vinegar

1 cup water

1/3 cup sugar

3 Tbsp salt

1. Cut beans into lengths 1 inch shorter than the pint jars.

2. Set 8 pint jars on a sheet pan and heat in the oven at 250 degrees until hot

3. Pack the beans vertically into the hot jars.

4. Distribute the sliced garlic, dill seed and peppercorns equally between the jars.

5. If canning put on water to boil (see step 9). If refrigerating, skip this step.

6. Combine the vinegar, water, sugar and salt in a medium non-reactive saucepan and bring to a boil. 

7. Pour the hot brine over the beans to cover by ½ inch. Leave ½ inch of headspace between the top of the liquid and the lid. Wipe rims with a clean, vinegar soaked piece of cheese cloth or paper towel, center lids on the jars and screw on jar bands.

8. Refrigerate (beans will keep for several weeks) or can, see step 9.

9. To can beans put enough water in a canner to cover the jars with 1” of water. Bring water to a boil and lower hot jars into the water being sure they are covered. Process in boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Turn off heat, remove canner lid and let jars rest in the water for 5 minutes. Remove and cool. Check seals then store in cool, dark place for up to 1 year.

Elderberries are ripening.  Unless you have cultivated elderberries it’s time to look for the ripening (purple) berries on wild bushes.  These often-overlooked treasures grow wild throughout Vermont, look in low lying areas along the roads.  Elderberry jelly, pies, wine, and juice are hard to beat and extremely nutritious.  Early Vermont settlers also appreciated that an elderberry bush next to a barn would prevent lightning strikes!

Perennials.  September is a good time to dig up and divide some of those oversized perennials (hostas, lilies, etc.).  They will have enough time to re-establish some root growth to withstand winter.  Dig them out and cut them with your spade or garden knife into moveable clumps for transplanting.  Be sure to put a couple tablespoons of rock phosphate (or bone meal) into the planting hole before placing the plant.  This will provide a source of this root stimulating nutrient for years to come.

Thinking ahead… now is the time to order your fall bulbs for October-November planting.  If you haven’t grown garlic, this can be the year you start.  Order “seed garlic” from a local farmer, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, FEDCO, Maine Potato Lady, or other online sources for late October planting.  Supermarket garlic may be treated to inhibit growth so don’t make good seed.

Soil Testing is a simple and important task we all should do this time of year.  Fertilizing your soil without a soil test is like taking medications without knowing what, if anything, is wrong.  Bad idea and possibly a waste.  The University of Vermont Extension service provides a good soil analysis and recommendations.  Get their simple directions online here, mail in your soil sample in a clean plastic bag with $15 and they will send you the information to make your garden or lawn better.

Pest Alerts. 

Tomato Hornworms (5-spotted Hawk Moth) have made their appearance and can defoliate a tomato plant in a day.  Look for side stems without leaves, usually in the upper area of the tomato plant.  Also, check your potatoes and peppers, they like those too. The caterpillars can be very large and plump by the time you find them.  Quickest way to dispatch them humanely is with pruning shears!  Pay attention however, if you see tiny white projections on the caterpillar’s body do NOT kill it.  Those attachments are cocoons of a beneficial parasitic wasp that will kill that caterpillar for you, plus produce many more who will search and destroy other caterpillars in your garden.  They are not a stinging wasp and will not bother you.

Ground Wasps!  August nests are at peak numbers and they can be very disagreeable when disturbed.  Please remember that while most wasps (there are over 100 species in Vermont) do not sting, they all have an important ecological role as pollinators and predators of garden pests, especially caterpillars and aphids.  Only the social/colonial wasps that build bigger nests might sting when disturbed.  Solitary wasps such as beneficial mason bees do not even have a stinger.  Bumble bees can be defensive but should not be destroyed unless absolutely necessary as they are important native pollinators. 

Nests located near play areas, doorways, or in lawns might have to be destroyed, but fortunately that can be done without any toxic chemicals or polluting gasoline introduced into the soil.  The most practical approach I’ve found is to quickly cover the nest hole with a piece of window screen anchored down with rocks or ground staples.  Pour up to 1 gallon of soapy water (1 cup dish soap in 1 gal. water) into the hole.  Yellow jacket nests can be up to 3 ft. deep so it may take at least a gallon of water to treat the nest.  Do this after dark when all the wasps are in the nest, be prepared to retreat if necessary, and leave the screen in place until all is quiet the next day.

Weeds.  It’s easy to let the weeds finally have their way in the garden as our plants are big enough to compete with them and we’re tired of constant weeding.  Do not stop now!  Weeds are now producing their flowers and seeds for next year, and several years after that.  Weeding now will yield benefits of reduced labor in the future if you remove those plants, or at least the seed heads on top.  It’s an important goal, do not allow weeds to go to seed in your garden!

Remember to compost your food and yard wastes for the best garden fertilizer.  Here’s a short video to help you get your own compost started.

What are you seeing on in your garden?  Got questions?  Suggestions? Leave a message in the Comments section below.