By Bev Johnson

Master Gardener

Did you notice an odd “blossom” on a plant? Does it look like a green spiny globe?  A witch’s-broom like flower, a sort of spiny, green globe? That plant has aster yellows and needs to be dug up before it spreads to your other flowers. This disease is caused by phytoplasma, a bacteria-like organism that is spread by leafhoppers. It can affect weeds like the dandelion, plantain, and vegetables, onion, tomato, and lettuce, and marigold, zinnia, petunia, purple coneflower and mums. There are other symptoms. The new leaves are yellow, small and often distorted. The plant may be stunted and have shorter stems than usual. A proliferation of shoots or leaves will grow from an odd area on a plant’s flowers.  Severely affected plants may not produce flowers at all. Compost them as the host needs live plant to live.

Have you noticed the “party decorations” along the roads lately? Those frothy floral ropes are wild cucumber, a native vine. An annual that that grows up and over other plants with the help of tendrils similar to your pea’s climbers. It will crawl over anything, evergreens, fences, shrubs and even over tall grasses. Farmers hate it as the vines can get tangled in harvesting equipment. You don’t notice it until it’s covered in white blooms. Male flowers are showy upright panicles. The female flowers grow in small clusters. The resulting fruit is an oval covered with soft spines. This plant is a distant relative of our garden cucumber.  Hooray for science.

If your lawn was decimated by grubs last summer, you are probably planning to replant grass. Late August to early September is the prime time to do it. The first step is to water the area. This makes it easier to rough up the soil. There are 4 steps to do it properly. Core aerate, dethatch, then overseed and fertilize. Good soil to seed contact is vital so the second step is to run a vertical mower (dethatcher/power rake) over the area. Go in one direction, north to south, then across east to west. Now, to be sure the seeds are in contact with the soil, “rake” the area with the rack teeth up. Then fertilize. Apply 1 pound per thousand square feet with a third to a fourth of the fertilizer, slow release. Keep the area damp until the seed is well sprouted then an inch a week to keep it growing and healthy. When it is high enough to mow, mow high, at least 3 inches. You can drop to a lower level in late fall to prevent snow mold.

Did your first tomato disappoint? Blossom end rot is quite common in the first crop. It starts with a small water-soaked area at the bottom of the fruit. It can look white. The area becomes sunken and turns black.  Homegrown tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes, so you don’t want to chuck the first one. Just cut the bad area off and eat the top. It’s perfectly safe.

This problem is caused due to how the tomato is growing. The most common cause is inconsistent watering. Another is over enthusiastic fertilizing. Too much nitrogen makes the vine grow so fast it can’t take up enough calcium in the soil. A PH of 6.5 is ideal for tomatoes. It’s just a tad alkaline as is most of our local soils. You can use a foliar spray to increase the calcium uptake. Check your nitrogen fertilizer bag. Tomatoes want nitrate nitrogen, not ammonium nitrate. Blossom end rot can pop up on peppers and eggplant too.