As gardeners we usually start the growing season with dreams of beautifully mulched beds, perfect rows of produce, and a vegetable garden that magically reduces our grocery bill by half. Then the hot, sticky, busy, mosquito-filled summer arrives and the garden that was planted with ambition falls to the bottom of the list. As a working mom of toddlers, I usually get into the garden about once a week during the growing season and both plants and weeds grow so quickly! Life happens, but a garden doesn’t have to be perfect to be productive. If the weeds are over your head, here are a few steps to help salvage what is left of the growing season:
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- Grab a container and harvest what can be used right away. This time of year that is usually corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, cabbage and zucchini. Harvesting these first not only helps remove the garden “clutter” but it is also an instant reward for working in the garden.
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Pull anything that is done for the season. This includes pea and bean vines, dried out herbs such as dill, salad greens that have gone to seed, and flowering broccoli. It does not pay to maintain and weed around plants that are no longer being productive. Also remove anything that is diseased or having insect problems such as blighted tomatoes, vines impacted by squash vine borer, or cucumbers with bacterial blight.
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Begin weeding: Start with the giant weeds and work down to the smaller ones at ground level. If the soil is too dry and they are difficult to pull, water for a few minutes to soften the ground to make it easier for you. If the weeds are really excessive, consider mowing them down with a string trimmer or lawn mower. Breaking your garden up into smaller areas and focusing on one part at a time will help keep it from being overwhelming.
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Assess what can be salvaged and harvested by the end of the growing season and make plans to save them. Likely this will be most root crops (potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, etc.), and fall squash. Work carefully around these, especially if they are deep in the weeds. Then see if they need additional help, you may need to add support to overgrown vines, tie up flopping tomato plants, or to cut back excess growth.
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Apply mulch- This helps keep the weeds down and improves water retention for the remainder of the growing season. Common examples of mulch include straw, wood chips, newspaper, or landscape fabric.
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Discover Cedar Apple Rust
Also known as Gymnosporangium Rust, a fungus that has been abundant this year! This fungus needs both a plant from the Cupressaceae family (red cedar, juniper) and another from the Rosaceae family (apple, hawthorn, serviceberry, etc.) to complete its life cycle and become active.
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- A cosmetic rust that rarely causes damage to the plant and rarely requires treatment.
- Causes yellow and orange leaf spots with a gall on the bottom of the leaf. It can also appear on fruit. In junipers, an orange gummy structure will appear.
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Join us to learn about tree biology and the standards of care that have been developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to help get trees off to a great start, led by Rich Hauer, Director of Urban Forestry at Eocene Environmental Group. We will build on the biology to discuss tree pruning and planting methods to optimize tree health.
This daylong workshop begins with a morning classroom session covering:
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Biological Basis of Tree Action: Terms, Technology and Standards of Care
- Best Management Practices: Tree Planting, Growth and Longevity
- Proper Tree Pruning
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After lunch, we head outside and put what you learned in the morning into practice. A planting demonstration will be followed by steps for structural pruning and then we’ll talk about site evaluation and safety. We will finish the day by looking at a variety of tree samples to illustrate how trees respond to human and natural influences.
The cost of the workshop is $70 per person and includes lunch.
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Something eating your plant? Need help identifying a tree? Interested in the best way to care for your lawn? Submit your questions online!
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| Kaitlin Bricco, Horticulture Educator |
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The University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of Extension provides equal opportunities in employment and programming in compliance with state and federal law.
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