Complaints. Complaints. I’ve been hearing so many complaints about squash plants, how they looked healthy, then all of a sudden flagged and took a turn on the road towards death. I can help you deal with the problem — but mostly for next year. The best time for action was earlier this season.

Young zucchini, early in season

An insect called the “squash vine borer,” lodged in the stem, is responsible for your squash’s wilting. The saga of how that insect got there began in early summer, when a pretty insect with an orange and black body crept out of the soil, stretched its coppery-green and clear wings, then looked around for a mate. She evidently found one, and soon after sought out your squash plants. Instead of squash, she also might have settled for a gourd, cucumber, or melon plant, in that decreasing order of preference.

Adult squash borer

Upon finding a suitable plant, she proceeded to lay her fertilized eggs on the stems or leaf stalks near the base of the plant, eggs which within a week hatched into larvae. The larvae bored into the stems, and ate so much that there eventually was not enough stem tissue to conduct water to the leaves. Voila! The leaves went limp, and that’s what grabbed your attention. Take a look at the base of the stem now, and you will see a hole out of which has poured some sawdust-like frass.

Fighting Ms. Melititia

We can fight this pest in a few ways. Because the moth only lays eggs early in the season, late plantings never pick up larvae. Thoroughly composting infested stems also helps if it gets the larvae before they leave the stem to return to the soil, which they do after about 6 weeks of feeding.

Another approach is to turn the moth away before she ever lays an egg on a squash plant. A floating row cover — or any other lightweight mesh material — allows water, light, and air to pass, but not Melittia cucurbitae (that’s the moth’s real name). The covering is only needed early in the season, during egg-laying, and, anyway, needs to be removed later so that bees can pollinate the blossoms. Covering merely the base of the plant with straw, nylon mesh, even aluminum foil, can prevent egg laying.

A physical barrier is 100 percent effective, but you could, instead, try repellents. Some gardeners claim that Ms. Melittia will avoid plants that reek of camphor, black pepper, or turpentine.

Another line of defense is to kill the larvae. You can kill them before they even get into the stem if you repeatedly dowse the base of the plant with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) aizawai, a readily available “organic” insecticide. Once the larvae are within a stem, get at them with any of the above pesticides — or parasitic nematodes — by injecting the material into the stem near where you see the telltale hole oozing frass (their sawdust-like poop).

If you are the kind of gardener who prefers hand-to-hand combat with pests, rather than pesticidal or biological warfare, then make a lengthwise slit in the stem just big enough to find the larvae, and stab it.

My second to favorite method for dealing with Ms. Melittia is to keep the plant happily growing in spite of her presence. I merely place bricks at intervals over portions of my squash’s trailing stems, inducing new roots to grow at those points. Larvae only lodge in the portion of stem right near where the seedling originally emerged, so new roots growing further along the stem can support the plant even if this oldest portion dies.

Problem Solved . . . Easily

My favorite method for averting damage from Ms. Melittia is to choose with care what squash to grow. The ideal squash would, of course, taste good, yield well, and be resistant to the borer. Those squashes exist! 

The word “squash” — or “pumpkin” — brings in a number of Cucurbita species. C. Pepo  includes zucchini, acorn, crookneck, and spaghetti squashes, as well as a number of “pumpkins.” They’re all very susceptible to squash vine borer.

Slightly less susceptible are C. maxima, which includes blue Hubbard, butternut (turban shaped), banana, Kabocha squashes, as well as — again a number of “pumpkins,” typically the larger ones.

The species C. moschata are very resistant to borers because of their thicker, solid stems. They are the ones I grow: butternut (pear shaped) as a winter squash and so-called Korean squash as a summer squash.

Squash, Butternut

Squash, Korean fruit forming

If they have one flaw it’s their rampant vines; these vines are now flowing up over and through my fence out of the garden and into the outside area. Plants bear fruits in keeping with the vines’ vigor. The butternuts bear and store well enough to keep appearing on our plates through winter, on into March.

Squash, Korean escaping fence

If you like very sweet squashes, the variety Honeynut, a hybrid of butternut and buttercup, is very borer resistant.

For years I grew zucchini squash. And every year it would get attacked by borers. The vines didn’t stretch out enough to allow new roots to form along their length. No matter, though. By the time my summer squash plants slumped, I was always relieved. After all, how much zucchini can anyone eat?

I’m still harvesting plenty of Korean squash — and giving plenty away.

But Adam did bite the apple, and I did plant apple trees and we each have dealt with the consequences. I could have resorted to the season-long drench of pesticides recommended to kill every pest. Instead, I decided to research potential pest problems, then see how little, if any, pesticide I could use and still harvest an acceptable crop of high quality apples.

Home grown Esopus Spitzenberg apple

I should say at the outset that I no longer grow apples. For three reasons. First, my site, with cold, dank air in a valley, is a poor one for growing apples. Second, especially in a poor site, some spraying is needed; I grew tired of that. And third, I found a local orchard where I can buy excellent Macoun, Ashmead’s Kernel, and Esopus Spitzenberg apples, along with other favorites of mine.

With that said, I would definitely grow apples if I had a higher site with sloping ground, full sunlight, and acres and acres of forest not so close. Or if I lived out West or nearer one of the coasts.

Insect Culprits

The three major insect pests of apples are apple maggot, plum curculio, and codling moth. Here on the farmden, apple maggots are the worst of the lot, dimpling fruits and riddling them with brown trails of burrowing larvae. Given free rein, apple maggots damage almost every fruit beyond offering even one good bite.

Dimpled fruit from apple maggot

Thankfully, the apple maggot has its Achilles heel. When the fly stage of this insect emerges in the latter half of June, the females search around for the biggest, reddest apples in which to lay eggs. I used to hoodwink Ms. Maggot with ersatz apples, which were red, plastic spheres  that I coated with a very sticky material called Tangletrap — one trap per dwarf tree, two or three for larger trees, hung at head height in clear view.

After a few years of dealing with the messy business of cleaning Tangletrap off each sphere for use the next season, I came up with a better idea. Why not buy and use some real apples, very firm and very red Red Delicious apples. They do look and smell like apples even if their flavor leaves much to be desired. And they do keep for a very long time. I coated these apples with Tangletrap and pushed a wire through each for hanging in the branches. By winter, they shriveled to nothing and, with wire removed, can be composted.

Maggot trap, with real apple

Unfortunately, no good alternative to spraying exists for plum curculio. This insect can cause fruit drop early in the season.

Plum curculio, cute but a real pest in eastern US

Instead of the usual chemical pesticide sprays used against this pest for the six weeks that it is active, this pest can also be controlled with a spray derived from kaolin clay. It’s a special formulation of kaolin — marketed under the name Surround — that coats everything to disguise the fruit and clog insects’ eyes, ears and reproductive organs. All in all, the coating makes Ms. Curculio think twice about landing, feeding, or laying eggs.

Sprays of Surround also keep Ms. Codling Moth at bay. This pest is active for much of the season, but even unchecked, results in only 25 percent fruits with the signature big, fat worm. This is the half a worm (actually a caterpillar) you see after taking a big bite out of apple.

Codling moth in apple

The problem with Surround is that the tree needs a heavy coating (3 sprays, even before bloom), and then the spray needs replenishing to keep it dusty every couple of weeks or after just a quarter of an inch of rain.

Sprayed trees will have a white cast to them — a very Mediterranean look, commented one visitor to my garden.

All Creatures Great and Small

Turning to diseases, the three most common ones are fire blight, cedar-apple rust, and scab. A combination of strategies keeps disease damage within reasonable bounds. I’ve always kept a careful eye out for fire blight, so that I could prune out any infections as soon as they show. Fire blight, which causes leaves or whole branches to blacken as if they have been singed by fire, thankfully never reared its frightful head in my backyard. The ends of infected branches curl over like a shepherd’s crook.

Cedar-apple rust shows up wherever wild cedars (especially eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana) abound, defacing leaves, and sometimes fruits, with rusty lesions. The cedars are alternate hosts for the disease, without which the disease cannot complete its life cycle. This disease is difficult to control with sprays organically, so I chose to accept a certain amount of damage rather than suit up for an additional spray session. And forget about removing nearby cedar trees because the fungal spores from cedars can travel as far as two miles!

Cedar apple rust on apple leaf

Apple scab results in corky brown lesions on fruits and leaves. Defense against scab always began in fall, when I would smother fallen apple leaves — the source of next year’s infections — beneath a thick mulch of wood chips. Leaves that fell on nearby lawn were defused by mowing thoroughly. Chopped, the leaves decompose quickly and are rendered harmless.

Apple scab on leaf

Although apple insects have cosmopolitan tastes, disease organisms are finicky. So another way to control diseases is with resistant varieties. One variety that I grow, Liberty, is resistant to all the major apple diseases. Other varieties have varying degrees of resistance to one or more diseases.

Liberty apple, home grown

Even without paying particular attention to planting only disease resistant varieties, I was able to harvest reasonably good yields of reasonably clean fruit using my combination of cleanup, limited spraying, and traps.

Cosmetically, my fruits put on a poor show compared with the perfect apples you see in markets. But my fruits were pesticide-free, and the Macoun, Jonagold, Spitzenberg, and other select apple varieties that I grew were simply scrumptious picked at their peaks of perfection. I hope Adam’s apple was as good.

Home grown Macoun apples

Ripe tomatoes bring to mind tomato sauce; tomato sauce brings to mind oregano. You would think that all that you needed to do to get oregano would be to mosey on down to the local seed store to pick up a plant or a packet of seeds, or send away to your favorite mail order nursery, right? Wrong!

Pizza

Oregano is, botanically, Origanum vulgare, a hardy perennial that sometimes parades under the names perennial marjoram, wild marjoram, or pot marjoram. As you can see, confusion is already creeping in. Marjoram is also the name of another herb. (Pronounce “marjoram,” with the accent on the first syllable, so the word sounds much like “margarine.”)

Margarine…whoops, marjoram…is an annual herb, that was once botanically Majorana hortensis and then became Origanum Majorana. The botanical names tell you that marjoram and oregano are kin, and they do, in fact, taste quite similar to each other, with marjoram being the sweeter and less strongly flavored of the two. Although marjoram is a perennial, it is a cold-tender perennial, so is usually grown as an annual. Because of its flavor, this marjoram is more specifically referred to an sweet marjoram. Because of its lack of hardiness, it’s also sometimes called annual marjoram.

But we can’t yet untangle ourselves from marjoram — sweet marjoram, that is — to stay with oregano, which is what we are after for our tomato sauce. A flavoring oil called “origanum oil” is extracted from either oregano or sweet marjoram, and occasionally, to further the confusion, from thyme or calamint. And sometimes this oil is called “marjoram oil.”

Now back to oregano, O. vulgare. Oregano is a very variable plant. That variable growth habit has given rise to some very ornamental forms, such as Kent Beauty, with trailing stems and hoplike blossoms, and Aureum, which forms a creeping mat of golden leaves. To me, those yellow leaves make the plant appear malnourished.

Kent Beauty oregano

Flavor Is What Really Matters

Oreganos also are variable in flavor — that most important attribute for our sauce. Some oreganos are virtually tasteless, such as one that I planted years ago. Perhaps you have had a similar experience. Recognizing the plight of us gardeners, some seed companies have started commenting, in their catalogs, on the flavor of the oreganos they sell.

True Greek Oregano is a name that has a flavorful ring to it, and this is the oregano now being promoted for strong flavor by some seed companies. The catalogs and websites list the botanical name for this True Greek Oregano as O. heracleoticum, whose common name is not really True Greek Oregano (a marketing ploy). It has also paraded under the common names of winter sweet marjoram or pot marjoram. At any rate, O. heracleoticum is, obviously a different species from O. vulgare, oregano, even though you would have to be a botanist to distinguish them. O. heracleoticum is considered by some to be O. vulgare subsp. hirtum, a subspecies of oregano.

If you’re not thoroughly confused by now, let me help you along in that direction. At least one seed company sells seeds of both plain oregano and True Greek Oregano, and they claim that plain oregano has the stronger flavor of the two.

Finally, Oregano Nirvana

I ripped that insipid oregano out of my garden long ago, and, finally, planted a deliciously, strongly one I needed for my sauce. To get this plant, I didnt resort to sorting through botanical names or sifting through seed catalogs. A friend had a large plant growing in her garden; I smelled it, liked it, and we divided it up into a few new plants. With its pungent flavor, small white flowers, and compact growth, this plant may very well be ‘True Greek Oregano.

My oregano’s hairy stems and leaves

Putting together all the information I gleaned from the web, the flavor has led me to the conclusion that what I’m growing is, in fact, O. vulgare subsp. hirtum, that is, True Greek Oregano. For further confirmation, I looked at the leaves and stems under magnification and noted their dense coverings of glandular hairs, another characteristic of True Greek Oregano.

Of course, all this is academic. What I wanted is good-tasting oregano. I have it.

I no longer grow “stinking roses” but when I did, it was the one vegetable that I was most likely to forget to plant each year. After all, although garlic, “the stinking rose,” is planted at the end of the season along with lettuce, endive, and radish, it’s not harvested along with these other vegetables, which all ripen or are at their best in the cool moistness of autumn. No, garlic ripens almost a year after planting, in the heat of summer. Nonetheless, now is a good time to plant garlic — and here’s a reminder for you.

Separating garlic cloves in head

True, many gardeners plant garlic in early spring and reap decent crops. And those of you who are more savvy — or who have done some reading on the subject — plant in late fall, which is when gardening books and magazine articles direct you to plant.

But let’s examine the logic of planting garlic in spring versus late fall versus late summer. Garlic rarely makes seed, so is grown by planting individual cloves, which, together, make up a bulb or “head” of garlic. The cloves first grow leaves and roots and then, in response to the long days and warm temperatures of summer, heads. New leaves cease to develop once heads start forming, and the more leaves the plant has pumped out before this occurs, the larger the heads.

What we all want from our garlic is big heads. So although you can reap a garlic crop from spring-planted cloves, or a larger one from fall planted bulbs, late summer planting gives the cloves the most time to grow the most leaves. This should yields the largest heads. Leaves which poke up through the ground in late summer do take a rest or even die back a little when temperatures plummet in winter, but growth resumes in spring.

Planting garlic

(We’re as desirous for large cloves as for large heads, but clove size is determined in large part by variety.)

Late summer planting also gives roots the most time to grope further into the soil before cold weather strikes. Not only is the plant then able to drink in more water and minerals generally, but is ready to do so with the first warm breath of spring. A large root system early in the season is a special advantage in years when summer weather turns bone dry. All those roots taking firm hold of the ground also prevent freezing and thawing of the soil in the months ahead from heaving the cloves up and out of the ground. (This is one reason that mulching is so heartily recommended following late fall planting of garlic in the north.)

Ready availability of fresh cloves is one more plus for planting garlic in late summer. It’s surely a lot easier to plant now than to store bulbs in perfect condition until spring for planting.

A Confession

I have to confess that I no longer grow garlic. This is sacrilege but my main reason for not growing garlic is because I’m not an enthusiastic fan of it, especially when used raw. And cooked with other vegetables, it’s flavor is lost.

I do enjoy the mellowing effect roasting has on garlic.

One more reason is that garlic that home grown garlic tastes no better than that you can buy from a supermarket or a farmers market. Any difference from home grown is nothing like the dramatic difference you get from home grown peas, asparagus, lettuce, and sweet corn. 

Perhaps my tastebuds are unrefined, at least when if comes to garlic. And I’ve admittedly tasted less than a handful of the hundreds of varieties.

Actually, garlic does grow here. But I don’t cultivate. Many years ago I did grow garlic which evidently dropped its seeds into the gooseberry and grape beds adjacent to my garden. Every year hundreds of sprouts appear, go to seed, and then lie dormant until the following season. Occasionally, for some reason, I’ll pull out a small head for kitchen use.

Naturalized garlic

Advantages and Disadvantages of Earlier & Later Planting

One admitted advantage to planting garlic later in fall is that, until then, many late season vegetables, such as endive, winter radishes, and cabbage, are still “holding their ground” and not willing to move out and make room for garlic. And they keep well sitting there in the cool weather awaiting harvest at your convenience. 

One (alleged) disadvantage to planting now is that plants are likely to sprout and those green sprouts will be threatened by subsequent freezing weather. Not to worry. I’ve seen daffodils do this during a spell of warm fall weather, without suffering harm. If it makes you feel better, cover those green sprouts with wood shavings, straw, or some other fluffy mulch once freezing weather settles in in earnest. That mulch will also maintain some warmth in the soil, affording roots more time to grow. My uncultivated garlics offer more evidence for the viability of late summer planting, or earlier!

The only other disadvantage I see to planting garlic now is remembering to do so.

Naturalized garlic scapes (which I also don’t like)

Smut doesn’t sound like something that you would want in your corn patch — anywhere, in fact. The dictionary says that smut can be, among other things, obscene language or anything that blackens like soot. The smut I am referring to is a disease of grasses, and corn, being a botanical grass, can get smut.

You probably have at some time seen smut popping out of your ears. Spongy galls, looking like corn kernels that have been pumped up with steroids and painted silvery gray, ooze from between the husks. Within days, the galls darken, then burst open to release powdery, olive brown spores. Not a pretty sight to most corn growers.

But let’s look at those puffy masses in another light. They are the fruiting bodies of a fungus, which still sounds repulsive until you think of mushrooms, which also are fruiting bodies of a fungus. Corn smut, although the bane of corn growers, has long been considered a delicacy in Mexico. Huitlacoche, as it is called, is eaten boiled or fried, and its popularity has spread northward.

Take Your Pick, Disease or Delicacy

So we can look upon smut either way: as a corn disease to fend off, or as a delicacy to cultivate. As a disease, smut is interesting because although it typically infects 5 percent or less of the ears in most fields, infection rates may be as high as 100 percent in some patches of corn. Generally, though, it’s not a problem.

Insect or mechanical damage facilitates entry of spores, as can hail.

But weather conditions that influence the disease are not clearly defined. Hot, dry weather early in the season has seemed most conducive to infection, as has warm weather with moderate rain.

You can’t do anything about the weather, but you can take some action against smut if you are growing sweet corn to eat. Those powdery spores are what spread smut, so one step in controlling the disease is to pull off and discard infected ears. Tassels and stems can also get smutty, so remove them, too. The spores overwinter in the soil, from where they can be wafted up to plants by breezes or splashed up by rainwater, which is just one more reason to plant corn in a different location each year.

How you grow corn can influence infection. Lush growth is most susceptible, so avoid overfeeding with high nitrogen fertilizers. Attack by corn borers also makes plants more susceptible to smut, perhaps because infections spread most easily through injured tissue.

Cultivating Smut

Now let’s do a flip flop, and try to raise corn smut instead of sweet corn. Interest in eating smut has prompted agricultural scientists to study ways to actually cultivate the disease. Smut has been fickle, though, not readily amenable to deliberate infection and varying in its intensity with growth stage of the plant, perhaps the variety of corn, and other variables.

Merchant in Guanajuato selling corn husks, tomatillos, and huitlacoches

Again, we can’t do anything about the weather, but we can feed our plants plenty of fertilizer and plant corn where it grew recently. If I was serious about smut, I’d have to radically change my ways of gardening. No more thorough cleanup at season’s end, in the corn beds at least. No more laying down an annual mulch of compost, which would keep spores from wafting or splashing up. No more maintaining good fertility.

And if I was really serious about smut, I might want to try saving last years galls, then spraying a water suspension of spores from those galls onto this year’s silks. Timing is critical. For best results, spray the spores onto the silks just as they are emerging from the tip of an ear. Problem is that it’s been many growing seasons since I last saw smut on my ears. But I could, or you could, buy smut spores which are offered by many sources on the web. (The web being what it is, you’ll also be presented with other kinds of “smut.”)

If you inoculate your plants and you’re lucky, galls should be starting to form within two weeks of inoculation, and ready for harvest a few days later. Harvest the galls just as they erupt through the husk, which is about 2 weeks after silks appear. At harvest stage, they should be firm with just a little give to them, plump and silvery gray.

If you reap a bumper crop, you can freeze them — no blanching needed. Or refrigerate them unbagged — on the cob, with leaves, for up to about a week.

Obviously, you can’t expect to maximize harvest of both sweet corn and smut. I like my Golden Bantam sweet corn a lot more that I do huitlacoche. Perhaps you, like I, will content yourself with the occasional smut-infected ears that appear every year.

When you eat the galls, you probably will enjoy them more if you didn’t know the translation of the Aztec name huitlacoche: “raven excrement” or, simply, “black shit.” Think of them as their marketing names, Mexican truffles or maize mushrooms.

Huitlacoche lasagne

Some raspberries are for eating; others are mostly for looking at — the plants, that is. Although you might not want to pluck fruits from these lookers, you might want to plant them in your flower garden. Two different kinds of good looking raspberry plants were recently staring out at me from the woods along a roadside.

The first of these, flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus), also known as thimbleberry, could be mistaken for a wild rose.

Flowering raspberry

Its large flowers, however, have broader petals than those of a wild rose, and while the rose’s petals are — well — rose colored, a purple tinge makes the petals of flowering raspberry downright lurid.

Pretty flowers and summer-long season of bloom are two qualities that recommend flowering raspberry as an ornamental shrub. Don’t let thorns make you afraid to plant this raspberry in your flower garden. This raspberry’s canes are unarmed. And no matter if your garden is not particularly sunny. Flowering raspberry is native to the somewhat shady edges of eastern American woodlands.

Another Beauty

I had to look more carefully last week to see the other pretty raspberry. This one, called wineberry, is native to Japan, Korea, and China. It was introduced into this country about 1890 as breeding stock for blackberries. Over the years, it has spread throughout much of the east to the point of being considered invasive and, in some states, prohibited.

It was not wineberry’s flowers that caught my eye. Wineberry finished flowering earlier in the season, and the flowers are, anyway, inconspicuous. 

What wineberry shows off are its gracefully arching stems clothed from head to foot in bristly, rusty red hairs. Get out a magnifying glass and peer even more closely at the hairs, and you will see that each is capped by a cute little globular gland.

Wineberry stem close up

Occasionally you find flowering raspberry or wineberry for sale at a nursery, but the easiest way to get started with either of these raspberries is to propagate them from existing plants (with permission of the landowner). In early fall or spring, just dig up a clump and separate it into smaller plants for replanting in your garden. Wineberry stems form roots where the tips arch to the ground, so you also can peg the end of a stem to the ground, then cut off and dig up the rooted plant next spring.

Goes with Wine, in Name, Flavor, and Looks

Not that I’m suggested planting wineberry but if you did want to cultivate it, give it the same annual pruning as blackberries. The plants have perennial roots, with individual stems living only two years. Canes flower in their second year, then die, so each winter the stems that have flowered and fruited back in spring and summer can be cut back to the ground. You can recognize old stems by their cracking bark and flower remnants.

Flowering raspberry differs from other members of the Rubus genus in having perennial stems. So the only pruning they need is to have some of their oldest stems cut down to make room for younger, more vigorous and floriferous ones.

Flowering raspberry and wineberry do bear edible fruits. I’ve never tasted those of flowering raspberry, but from what I’ve read, they are rather tart and dry, with a flattened shape.

Flowering raspberry fruiting

Wineberry fruits remain tightly enveloped in a protective calyx until they are just about ripe. This calyx is particularly dense with those bristly hairs, which not only makes them look pretty but also contributes to their pest resistance.

As wineberry fruits ripen, the bristly calyxes spread open to reveal the berries within. When ripe, they are spectacular clusters of sparkling red globules.

Wineberry fruiting

As I wrote, I’m not suggesting planting wineberry. I can and do enjoy the beauty of the arching stems and the fruits in the wild. Oh, and also their taste. I have read and have no doubt that they are also delicious and beautiful also dipped in chocolate or wine.

What gave Susan her black eye? Her central florets, that’s what. Black-eyed Susan flowers, blooming now and for the next few weeks, are actually made up of two kinds of florets, or small flowers. In the center of each flower are small, tubular flowers called disk florets. Those tubular petals are dark. Hence the black eye.

Black-eyed Susan disk flowers

Florets around the outside edge of the eye are called ray florets, and each one has one petal, large and orange-yellow. The petals point outward around the black eye, like a sunburst. The disk flowers and the ray flowers give black-eyed Susans the characteristic look of a daisy, “day’s eye,” which is the origin of the word.

(Not all flowers of the Daisy Family generally have a mix of ray and disk flowers. Dandelions, for example have all ray flowers resulting in a powderpuff of yellow petals. Tansy flowers represent the other extreme, all disk flowers.)

A Very Resilient Plant

You’ll find black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) spreading open their petals in sunny fields from Maine to Georgia and west to Illinois. Here is a plant that thrives in summer’s searing heat, and is unfazed by periods of drought. Black-eyed Susan is also not finicky at all about soil. This flower will thrive almost anywhere, as evidenced by it’s having naturalized to the western states, as long as it has at least a half a day or more of sun.

With such qualities, it is no wonder that black-eyed Susans have been moved into flower gardens. Black-eyed Susan is one of those short-lived perennials that is usually treated as an annual or biennial. Sow it in early spring, and enjoy its blossoms beginning the very first season. Sow it now, and enjoy its blossoms beginning next year.

Despite its sometime annual or biennial behavior, black-eyed Susan is not a plant that you have to grow from seed every year. Once you establish this flower in your garden, it will reseed itself naturally.

Self-seeded black-eyed Susan

To collect seeds from wild plants, cut off flower heads as they are fading but before the seeds disperse. Then let the heads finish ripening their seeds in an open paper bag in an airy, warm room. Whether you sow the seeds this summer or next spring, give them warm soil, at least 70 degrees, in which to germinate.

High-Bred Susans

Gloriosa daisies are a botanical form of black-eyed Susan often grown in gardens. With double the usual number of chromosomes, gloriosa daisies have large flower heads, six inches or more across, and sometimes extra rows of petals. It was created in the 1950s by doubling the chromosomes by treating seeds with colchicine (which occurs naturally in colchicum, also called autumn crocus even though it’s not a crocus).

Goldilocks gloriosa daisy

If you like black-eyed Susans for cutting, Indian Summer is a variety particularly suited for this purpose. The flower heads are very large, up to eight inches across, but the best thing about Indian Summer is how long it lasts once cut. The flowers actually look better after a couple of days in the vase than when they are first cut, and will keep looking perky for about ten days. 

Goldsturm is another popular garden variety of black-eyed Susan. It is actually a different species (R. sullivanti) from the roadside Susans, and a bit more demanding of water if it is to put on its best show. Give it good conditions, though, and the two foot high plants will be smothered in three to four inch deep yellow blossoms — with black eyes, of course.

Rudbeckia Goldsturm

Yet another species, sweet black-eyed Susan, does tolerate drought very well, reliably putting on its show through August and September. A dramatic difference between sweet black-eyed Susan and the other Susans is the height of this plant: The flowers, with yellow petals around a brownish purple eye, perch prominently atop 5 foot stalks.

I just gotta’ mention one more black-eyed Susan, a meandering, tropical vine about 6 feet tall and totally unrelated to the previously mentioned Susans. Black-eyed Susan vine (Thunbergia alata) is a perennial, but because she cannot take temperatures much below freezing, treat her as an annual around here. The orange color and dark purple centers of the flowers, each an inch or so across, give rise to the plant’s common name. In contrast to our native black-eyed Susans, black-eyed Susan vine gets her black eye from the dark throat that results from the purple base of each flower’s five petals.

Black-eyed Susan vine

Dahlia, Kelvin Floodlight

A Single Pinch’ll Do It

Pinching out the tips of growing stems stops, at least temporarily, their growth, in so doing coaxing growth of side shoots. The result: bushier plants. Even though plants such as lavatera, marigold, and zinnia are naturally bushy, pinching out the tips of their stems makes them more so.

Early in the growing season, when any and every flower is still to be cherished, you may find that the top bud on, for example, a marigold seedling is a flower bud or even an already opened flower. Grit your teeth and pinch it off!

Not only will doing so make the plant bushier; it will also channel energy destined for that flower into the growth of new shoots. Allowing a small seedling to flower prematurely saps its strength, so the plant is likely to remain a runt. Defer your pleasure. (As consolation, read the words that Charles Dudley Warner wrote in 1888 in My Summer in a Garden: “The principal value of a private garden is . . . to teach patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues— hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of character, as it was in the beginning.”)

Don’t carry pinching to excess, though, because it does delay flowering. Pinching is something you want to do mostly at the beginning of the growing season. And not that you’d always want large flowers rather than small flowers, but plants with more side shoots have more — but smaller — flowers.

A single pinch is usually sufficient for marigolds and other naturally bushy flowers. Certain chrysanthemums look best with repeated pinching. With snapdragon and some other spiky flowers, you have a choice: Do you want a single large spike, or several smaller ones?

 Fewer, But Bigger

Just as pinching the tips of stems makes for bushier plants with more but smaller flowers, limiting the number of stems or flowers has the opposite effect. This is how you grow “football” ‘mums and “dinnerplate” dahlias.

The way to create a plant with fewer but larger flowers is to channel a plant’s energy into fewer growing points. Pinch off side shoots, or pinch off flower buds forming along a stem, or reduce the number of stems sprouting from ground level.

Remove a side shoot or lateral flower bud while either is still young enough to be succulent and pinched off. At that stage, removing the side shoot hardly affects overall plant growth because the side shoot or flower is not yet contributing to the energies of the plant. 

New England aster, perennial phlox, and thick-leaf phlox are examples of plants that put on a better show if you reduce the number of shoots they send up from ground level. When shoots are 2 inches high, remove all but three per plant.

Removing spent flowers — called deadheading — is yet another way of pruning to get the best from your flower plants. Deadheading does double duty, keeping plants tidy and preventing seed formation, which can drain enough energy from a plant to slow or stop flowering.

Deadheading is especially effective at keeping annuals energetic because all they live for is to flower enough to set some seeds, then happily die, all in one season. Once that occurs, they are apt to slacken their efforts at making more flowers. Deadheading keeps annuals energetic.

Even some perennials will come back for a repeat performance later in the season if you cut back their flowers after the first show. Try it with delphinium and Canterbury bells.

Cutting back spent delphinium flower stalks

Cutting individual, spent flowers from mounded plants bearing small flowers could be tedious. Deadhead alyssum, nasturtium, and petunias by shearing the whole mound back with either grass or hedge shears after a flush of bloom.

Shearing back alyssum

Give mounded perennials like basket-of-gold, cottage pink, edging candytuft, and spike speedwell similar treatment. All these plants will look ragged for awhile, but good growing conditions soon has them happily lumbering along the ground and, in some cases, flowering again that same season.

Another way that deadheading keeps plants tidy is by preventing them from self-seeding and growing all over the place. Especially fecund plants include feverfew, perennial phlox, and thick-leaf phlox. Lop off their spent flowers before they make seeds.

For more about pinching and other types of pruning, see my book, THE PRUNING BOOK.

Although you water your plants with the best of intentions, whether by drowsily spritzing your tomato leaves with spray from a hose or by sloshing buckets of water beneath your roses, your efforts might be ineffective. One way to judge this is to scratch the surface of the ground right after you water. Don’t be surprised if the ground bone dry an eighth of an inch deep.

Because feeder roots of plants are mostly in the top foot of soil, that is the depth of soil to be moist. And that’s deeper than you are going to be able to scratch with your finger.

Instead of Your Finger

So the next technological leap, after use of your finger, in determining whether you should water or have watered enough, is the use of a trowel. With your trowel, you can dig down a foot or so to see and feel how moist the soil is.

Of course, you can’t expect to pock your garden with holes, disturbing roots, every time you water or want to know if you need to water. Fortunately, other methods are at our disposal.

An easy method to determine soil wetness is with an electronic moisture meter, available through many local and mail order garden supply stores. You merely push the metal probe of this device into the ground, then read “dry,” “moist,” or “wet” on the gauge atop the probe.

You have to be careful putting your faith in these electronic devices. Water conducts electricity, and the probe determines soil moisture by how well the soil conducts electricity. The problem is that any soluble fertilizer increases the electrical conductivity of water, and this can throw off readings. You also must be careful not to break the probe pushing it into rocky or rock-hard soil, and you cannot leave the device in place. Remove and clean it after each reading.

A tensiometer is another device that lets you conveniently read soil wetness off a gauge. It is a long, sealed tube that is filled with water and has a ceramic cup at its bottom. As soil outside the tube dries, it tries to suck water out of the tube, and this suction is displayed on a gauge.

A tensiometer provides an accurate measure of soil wetness irrespective of fertilizer, and you can — and should — leave it in place all summer. You can even hook it up to some irrigation device, to automatically turn on the water when the soil reaches a certain level of dryness. The only disadvantages of tensiometers are that they are pricey and are of limited use in very sandy soils.

Higher and Lower Tech Options

A totally different approach to knowing when and how much to water is the indirect approach, by estimation.  Do this with a pan of water, from which water evaporates about as fast as it is lost from the soil through evaporation and plant uptake. A gallon paint can makes a good “pan evaporameter,” but any large, straight-sided container will do. Fill it to within two inches of its top with water and place it in the sun. Then measure the water depth in the can with a ruler, and repeat the measurement on a daily or weekly basis.

When measurements show a loss of water, make up the difference by watering. If the depth drops a half-inch, for example, turn on you sprinkler until it brings the level back up in the can. If you are using the measurement in your can to tell you when to dribble water on the ground from the end of your hose or watering can, count each one inch depth of water lost as equivalent to a three-quarters of a gallon of water per square foot of area to be watered.

You could carry your estimating one step further, and just assume that your plants need one inch of water per week through the growing season. This is a very rough estimate, but religiously provide that much water and your plants will be pretty happy. Do occasionally check the soil itself, though, so your plants never have to tell you by their flagging leaves that they are thirsty.

A rain gauge can tell the amount of moisture falling from the sky whether from rain or your sprinkling

In my first book, A Northeast Gardener’s Year, published 35 years ago, I described various goings on in my garden month to month. What topics made it to each month’s pages was left to the “whims and vagaries of the weather and the weeds, the unfolding of blossoms and the ripening of fruits, perhaps the cry of a plant begging to be repotted as it pushed its roots through holes in the bottom of its container.”

At that time, with almost 20 years of gardening experience under my belt (as well as graduate degrees and research in agriculture), I figured I had some idea of what was going on beyond the garden gate. Like the weather, for instance, as it related to when to sow seeds, set plants in the ground, and harvest. I even went so far, for instance, in the appendix of my book to list in granular detail what week in what month to sow tithonia, when to keep an eye out for gooseberry mildew, or when to take geranium cuttings. I had the hubris to present such details as if set in stone.

In the late 19th century, Charles Dudley Warner wrote (as quoted by and misattributed to) Mark Twain, “Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” How wrong he was. It wasn’t common knowledge then, but we humans had already started doing something about the weather; global warming began its rise in earnest.

There’s Change A’Coming (And It’s Here)

It was hard for me to imagine that a shift in climate would occur and become obvious within a relatively short period of even a lifetime. And I do mean “climate;” weather refers to short-term changes in the atmosphere, the day to day ups and downs, while climate refers to atmospheric changes over longer periods of time. I could accept there being vagaries in the weather, but a shift in climate?!

Since penning my book, plants have told me what the weather and news reports might not have. Thirty plus years ago, for instance, I had to coddle a warm season vegetable like okra, starting seeds indoors around the last spring frost date, transplanting them into the garden once the weather warmed, and finally hoping for a sufficiently warm summer for a decent harvest. These days I just drop the seed into waiting furrows out in the garden towards the end of May, then stand back. Plants sprout and grow quickly and with the now common warmer nights, bear harvestable pods almost every day.

Bamboo is another of my bellwethers of our changing climate. I first planted Yellow Grove bamboo (Phyllostachys aureosulcata) almost 40 years ago; it’s among the most cold hardy of bamboos, both useful and beautiful, with canes that can grow one to two inches in diameter. The plant is evergreen — as long as winter temperatures don’t plummet too low. If they do, canes die back and leaves turn brown and fall off even though the roots survive to fuel new canes in spring. That was business as usual for many years after I planted Yellow Groove Bamboo.

Canes that remain alive and evergreen through winter thicken in the following season, and also sprout more robust new canes. Over the past decade winter low temperatures have oven hovered around 0°F rather than the usual minus 20°F, resulting in beautiful canes but more vigorous spread.

(For all its qualities, I don’t suggest planting Yellow Groove Bamboo. It’s very invasive, rapidly spreading via thick underground runners, and is banned in a number of states and municipalities.)

Bamboo, dead and new canes

The average last spring frost date for my garden is the third week in May. Some recent years, that last frost bowed offstage in early April. That’s not always a good thing. This past spring warmed early, with weeks of warm weather following; the extended warmth awakened flower buds on my apple and pear trees, but then a bitter frost (27°F) made a late spring encore, in spades. Poof. The life of embryonic fruits was snuffed out.

Temperature, Rain, Snow, Cold

Of course, weather and climate aren’t only about temperatures. They’re also about rainfall patterns, also with significant effect on our plants. Not only have temperatures been warmer, but rainfall has also been increased — especially 2023, with over 17 inches more rain than average. That’s one of the reasons many of us gardeners credit 2023 as being the worst gardening year ever, or, at least for me, in the past 40 years.

I prefer dry summers; my vegetables and blueberries are drip irrigated. But what can a gardener do about a wet summer? Good soil drainage is then important, with plenty of compost and, if needed, raised beds.

Notwithstanding this past winter here, the general trend for snowfall in the Northeast has been less and less. My measure for that is the number of days I could slap on my skis and hit the nearby cross-country trails. But what about plants and snow? Snow provides plants with a little free nitrogen but, more important, it’s a good mulch. Plants and soil snuggled beneath the insulating white blanket don’t suffer from extremes in soil temperature, limiting both cold damage and heaving out of the soil by freeze-thaw cycles.

Book Burning Not Necessary

Ah, for the good ol’ days back in 1991 when the weather and climate were predictable (but not really) and I and my readers could refer to my book for when to do what, and why, in the garden.

Is it time for me to burn the book? No! Many topics, such as edible flowers, birdhouse gourds, digging (or not digging) the soil, fencing, and planting by the phase of the moon, are climate independent. And, as for those granular dates for sowing, transplanting, and other weather dependent activities, I just move spring dates back a week or so and fall dates forward a week or so, and I’m back in business with A Northeast Gardener’s Year. Now it’s next week for sowing endive.

As for climate change, let’s each of us put some brakes on our energy consumption and back politicos that can see into the future the obvious.