This week in the Master Gardeners’ Demonstration garden at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg, the Master Gardeners have been harvesting summer vegetables including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, beans, chard, and herbs. They also planted Brassica (cabbage, etc.) transplants (look for these at your local nursery) and kale seeds for fall harvest. These have been mulched and covered with “row cover” ( a light weight polyester material that can be ordered from gardening supply web sites and catalogues) to keep cabbage moths from laying their eggs in the plants (their larvae are small green worms that tunnel into the plants). Also lettuces, arugula, spinach and radish seeds are being planted for fall harvest.

The cucumber beds have been cleared of cucumber plants, as these have succumbed to diseases and the beds have been amended with compost and this has been turned in and watered. Fall vegetables will be planted in these in the near future.

The strawberry beds have been thinned of extra runners so the plants won’t be too crowded. If you don’t have strawberry plants in your garden and think you don’t have room for them this is one of the plants that does well in containers. You can plant them now or wait until spring. It is a lot of fun to go out and pick strawberries to put on your cereal in the mornings or just to eat out of hand.

If you get a chance to come by the garden, check out the watermelons that are growing vertically (on supports). Very fun way to grow them if you are short on space but love watermelons.

In the ornamental gardens our giant pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) is “blooming” as is the Ruby grass. the Golden Rod (Solidago) is just beginning to show its color (although the wild Golden Rod has been blooming for a week or so).

Be sure and weed your garden beds and keep cutting back the spent flowers to keep the plants blooming and to keep your garden looking neat.

Happy Gardening and if you have any questions about this information, or any gardening questions, please contact the Master Gardeners at the Master Gardener “Help Desk” at 703-771-5150 or email us at ex107mg@vt.edu .

The Fall edition of the Trumpet Vine newsletter is in the works.  If you are interested in subscribing, send a note containing your email to the Help Desk email, and we’ll add you to the list!  Due to budget constraints, we only send out this publication via email.  You will also receive the above gardening advice as well.

This week in the Master Gardeners’ garden at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg the Master Gardeners have been dealing with this excessive heat wave by watering very generously. This watering, done deeply (thoroughly saturating the soil, but avoiding run-off, which is wasteful), helps plants cope with the very high temperatures we have experienced recently.

The Master Gardeners are also harvesting watermelons (which they are growing on a trellis) and tomatoes. The cucumbers and squash have slowed down in production, probably due to the excessive heat.

The bean beetles have destroyed a bed of bush beans and they have been removed and a new bed of bush beans has been planted (it is still not too late to plant bean seeds for a late summer/early fall harvest).

Be sure and keep your vegetable beds as weed free as possible during this time of year as weeds can steal moisture from your vegetable plants.

In the ornamental beds, now is the time to cut back your lavender plants. If you have not grown lavender before it is a very easy and delightful plant. If you prune it back after flowering right from the start you can keep it from getting woody and unsightly. Cut the plant back to about 4 inches from the stem and harvest the flowers and rubber band them together and hang them to dry.You can use them for in sachets or as dried flowers.

Cannas are getting ready to bloom.

Be sure to “dead head” (remove spent flowers) from your ornamentals if you want to keep them flowering.

Happy Gardening and if you have any questions about this information, or have any questions about gardening, please contact the Master Gardener “Help desk” at 703-771-5150 or email us at ex107mg@vt.edu .

The CSI facility is basically a warehouse – the trucks arrive hauling 900 houses worth of recycling, they dump it onto the floor of the warehouse where it is then hand sorted into piles.  Cardboard is thrown flat onto a conveyer belt which hauls it to a baler.  The bales of cardboard are then stacked ready for freight shipment to North Carolina – ready to be turned back into a paper pulp slurry.  Generally, the recycled cardboard is used to make low grade products such as the corrugated section (wavy middle) of new cardboard.  Metals are sorted, compressed, and sent via train to places like Kentucky to be smelted and reused.  Glass containers are reused, versus recycled, or sent to the landfill where they are ground up and used as roadway material – a much cheaper alternative to gravel.  Plastics are grouped all together and sent to processing plants which further separate and recycle.  Many of the plastic bottles you use daily are made into carpets and clothing.

What about plastic grocery bags?  CSI sends them along with the other plastics, but generally, they are disposed of at the secondary sorting site.  The best bet to make sure your plastic grocery bags don’t end up in a landfill somewhere is to take them to the Giant who has a contract with a company specifically set up to recycle these bags.  Better yet, remember to take your reusable shopping bags with you when ever you have to shop!  In fact, our CSI spokesman, Paul Williamson, made the comment that the best way to “recycle” is at the source – reduce your packaging and waste at the source, and avoid having material to recycle.  A great web site which has a wonderful selection of reusable bags is: http://www.reusablebags.com/  My favorite are “Envirosax” bags – they can be purchased in a set of 5, fold down into a small billfold sized packet, and are strong enough to be filled to bursting.  ReusableBags also has a good selection of alternatives to plastic bottles.  ”Sigg” bottles are great as they are lightweight aluminum and lined so they are resistant to bacteria and don’t carry a taste from a previous drink.  The great thing about buying a “named” product such as Sigg, is the ability to buy replacement caps.  Ours have been thoroughly tested in a year of school lunches – they’ve been drop-kicked and generally abused, but will certainly last another year, dents and all.

We planted more “seed” potatoes and they are already sprouting (it is still not too late to plant potatoes, either. You can try growing them in a whiskey barrel or large flower pot – but not the potatoes you get from the grocery store as they have been treated so they will not sprout). Also our sweet potatoes are flowering and are very beautiful (you could try these next year in whiskey or wine barrel – just suspend a sweet potato in a glass of water with tooth picks and when it sprouts, plant the sprouts in the soil).

We have been spraying our cucurbits with “Surround”, a clay that helps deter bugs, but have had some trouble with wilt from the squash and cucumber beetles.

Also we have been treating our tomatoes with copper dust (be very careful if you use this and use it early), compost tea and continued trimming of diseased leaves for “early blight” and are hopeful for a good harvest.

By the way, if you are interested in choices of tomatoes for next year here is a web site that compares productiveness of different tomatoes
http://www.todaysgardencenter.com/news/varietycentral/index.php?storyid=2235

Now is the time to plant fall turnips, beets, carrots, kale and lettuces. As you clear out a crop have some compost ready to put in the bed before you put in the next seeds or transplants. A handful of compost mixed into the area where you are planting will help with fertility and disease resistance.

Continue to monitor for water – remember 1 inch per week. And water less frquently and more deeply (perhaps twice per week for 30 minutes, rather than every day for 5 minutes as this will encourage deeper roots for your plants).

In the ornamental beds we are “dead-heading” (removing spent flowers from plants) and cutting back day lily foliage, coreopsis and Siberian iris foliage.

Happy gardening and if you have any questions about any of this information, or have any other gardening questions, please contact the Master Gardeners’
“Help Desk” at 703-771-5150 or email us at ex107mg@vt.edu .

Thanks again for the above information from the “Garden to Table” group of the Loudoun County Master Gardeners!  As an aside, mark your calendars now as this group will be holding a two day veggie growing symposium at the Ida Lee downstairs meeting rooms.  The dates are March 20 & 21st, and we are in the process of booking some high profile speakers!  The cost will be affordable as we are plowing our profits back into the community!  Keep posted and I’ll let you know more as the information becomes available.

Tomatoes may develop “blossom end rot” because of the lack of water at this time. This is an inability of the plant to take up calcium because it needs water to do this. If you notice the bottom end of the tomato looks rotten discard that tomato and the next ones should be fine. It is usually the first tomatoes that suffer with this problem.

Also you can check out www.wtop.com for tips on late blight that seems to be showing up in tomato plants purchased at some large stores.

The Master Gardeners have harvested the last of the peas, the first beans, first cucumbers, first blackberries, and the first artichokes. They are still harvesting beets, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic and lettuces and kale.

In the vegetable garden they are weeding, staking the pepper plants, and spraying ”Surround” (an organic clay) on cucumber vines, squash vines and tomatoes for insect control. The sweet potatoes vines are having to be fenced in because they are doing so well.

In the ornamental beds, everything is in full flower – very beautiful! Especially the cosmos, lady bedstraw, butterfly bush and black-eyed susans.

Now is the time to cut back your mums if you want to keep them from flopping over after they bloom. This keeps them smaller and tidier but delays the blooms.

Remember to “dead-head” all the flowers that are past  their prime if you want to keep you plants flowering.

If you have any problems, please feel free to give the Master Gardener Help Desk a call at 703-771-5150, or email at ext107mg@vt.edu

We are also harvesting potatoes which are another easy and very satisfying crop to grow. And newly picked potatoes are especially delicious.

We have had some trouble with our tomato plants being diseased this year because of all the spring rains and have replaced 3 of them with new plants. When you trim the leaves off of your tomato plants that are diseased please take the time to sanitize your clippers each time (with rubbing alcohol or wipes so you don’t spread the disease).

We have started our fall vegetables – broccoli, kohlrabi and other brassicas. We will plant them in the ground in 6 to 8 weeks (early September). It is not too late to start yours. If you don’t want to start your own, look for them at nurseries in another month or so.

If you planted beans watch for Mexican bean beetles and hand pick them and drop them into soapy water. It is not too late to plant some bean seeds.

In the ornamental area of the garden

Hummingbird among Crocosmia - wikipedia

we have been weeding and “deadheading” (no this has nothing to do with Jerry Garcia) – this is snipping off the faded flowers so the plant will keep flowering. Our Crocosmia is blooming – very beautiful – as our many other flowers. Come by IdaLee and see the Master Gardeners’ garden if you want some ideas for what grows well in our region.

Happy gardening and if you have any questions please contact the Master Gardeners at
Phone: (703) 771-5150; email:  vt107mg@vt.edu

You can find the Master Gardner’s demonstration garden at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg. Volunteers are available every Tuesday and Thursday morning – 9 until noon.

This week at the Demonstration Garden at IdaLee we are still harvesting peas, chard, lettuce, beets, broccoli and onions.

We are planting another batch of bush bean seeds for a later harvest. If you haven’t planted bush beans (green beans) they are one of the easiest and most rewarding crops. Just plant the seeds about 1/2 inch under ground and water. The seeds will sprout in about a week and you will have green beans in a little over a month. Bugs do very little damage and can be hand picked and dropped in soapy water. You can mulch with some straw to keep weeds down.

Check tomato leaves for signs of disease and remove any that look suspicious.

If you planted garlic last fall you should probably get ready to harvest. Watch for the leaves to start turning yellow/brown. Don’t wait too long because you don’t want the bulbs to start to separate as they won’t store as well. And if you have never grown garlic, it is also a very rewarding crop. Order your bulbs now for fall delivery and plant in late September/early October for a summer crop in ’10.

If you are going to have a fall garden you can start your seeds under lights now. This would include broccoli, cauliflower, chard, cabbage, collards, kale.

Happy gardening and if you have any questions please contact the Master Gardeners at
Phone: (703) 771-5150; email:  vt107mg@vt.edu

You can find the Master Gardner’s demonstration garden at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg.