Gardens are now heading into the season finale with harvests of almost everything. Dry weather has been hard on many veggies and flowers but extra mulching and watering can keep plants healthy. This is a good time of year to apply foliar compost tea and your own homemade biofertilizers (see July article). It’s also a good time to get a soil test so you know what is needed for next year.  Tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, and cabbage will do well if you follow a few basic tips to extend the season and keep them healthy.  Late summer pests & diseases are appearing too so be alert.

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 report.  Get their simple directions online here, mail in your dry soil sample in a clean plastic bag with $17 and they will send you the information by email or regular post to make your garden or lawn better.

What to Plant in September?  Seeds or transplants of lettuces, arugula, spinach, kale, & radishes will do well.  Keep filling those empty spaces!

Late Season Tomato care.  August & September conditions generally are good for a plant’s growth, but some plant diseases appear now.  Plant diseases can’t be cured, only prevented and managed.  Most important is disease resistant varietal selection, but that’s a consideration 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 to eat, 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, 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 (leaf) feeding is quickly ingested and can extend the production of tired tomatoes, summer & winter squash, cucumbers, peppers, and many flowers that have used or lost the nutrients from waterlogged soil.  Fish emulsion (available at most garden centers and online as a liquid concentrate) is a great 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 sprayer or with a watering can with a sprinkler head. I’m also using fermented plant extracts and biofertilizers as foliar supplements to provide a balanced nutrient food for plants.

It’s also important 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, tomatoes and peppers are really sub-tropical plants and don’t know that winter is coming so they are still trying to grow.  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 after Sept. 1 to 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.

Japanese Beetles continue to emerge from the lawns and are moving onto beans, raspberries, roses, and whatever is available.  As I’ve said before, handpicking works, commercial bag traps do not reduce their numbers.  Every adult that you remove from the garden is one less to reproduce for next year.  Remember to check for tiny, white spots on the beetle back before killing them.  Winsome fly eggs are a good sign and that beetle is now a host for future beneficial flies.  Release it and you will benefit from it next year! Mow your lawns tall (4-6 inches) to reduce beetle breeding for next year.  For area control you can apply Beneficial Nematodes to the lawn to reduce the larval (grub) population.  This is expensive but is effective for many years.

Cabbage moths (brown or white wings with a black spot) continue mating and laying eggs on cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, etc.  They will hatch into “cabbage worms” that can spoil a great harvest.  Covering all Brassicas with insect netting is a great control. Apply weekly treatments of Bt or Dipel (caterpillar killer) to the plants when rain is not forecast.  Bt is a naturally occurring soil bacteria that will stop the caterpillars.

Raspberry cane borer   Adults are small dark slender beetles that insert their eggs into the tops of raspberry or blackberry canes that will appear wilted.  Look a couple inches down the cane and if you see 2 dark rings around the stem, that is where the borer larvae are growing.  Prune the affected part of the cane off, burn it or chop it up and remove it from the area. 

Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) is a serious new pest of soft fruits (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, etc.) that probably hasn’t appeared locally yet but it’s a good idea to keep watching.

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 or other online sources for late October planting.  Supermarket garlic is probably the wrong variety for here and may be chemically treated to inhibit growth so doesn’t make good seed.

Get the Weeds!  Do not stop weeding now!  Weeds are now producing their seeds for next year.  Weeding now will yield benefits of reduced work in the future if you remove those plants, or at least the seed heads on top.  Do not allow weeds to go to seed in your garden!  Use the seed-free weeds as compost or make your own liquid biofertilizer. (see previous article)

Make more Compost!  This time of year we have an abundance of ingredients for the compost bins.  Garden plants, grass clippings, fruit & veggie scraps, and autumn leaves (soon) all produce the best soil amendments.  Here is a comprehensive website to all things compost.