Grow with Grace: How to Weed Through Your Garden’s Good, Bad & Ugly

Well, we took a little time off from garden toiling last week, relaxed and mused about the bountiful mess of it all and what to do. Yes, now is the time to address some common issues we see in the late-summer garden. Let’s dig in!

Giving an Ugly Garden Some Grace

First, it’s important to remember that August gardens are rarely beautiful. They’ve been through a lot. They’re working hard. They’ve grown and matured in ways that are sometimes unwieldy — or a bit of just plain ugly and unkempt, no matter how hard you’ve worked for the prettiest garden in town. Plants are producing heavily and focused on giving back, so looks are taking a back seat.

Sound familiar?

Don’t be hard on yourself if the neat, precise vegetable garden you planted in May looks messy and chaotic now. Tomato plants rarely grow straight (although next spring we’ll talk about techniques for staking and caging). Cucumber and squash leaves die. Peppers tip over. Diseases and pests of all sorts are on the move with a mission to mess up your pretty little patches of healthy good looks.

This summer has been exceptionally tough. Several periods of extreme heat, torrential rain and intermittent drought, along with an early spring followed by a late frost created extra challenges for even the most seasoned gardeners. Extreme heat stalled tomato ripening, bringing a flood of tomatoes later in the season. Uneven rainfall also contributed to misshapen and split tomatoes as well as blossom end rot.

Bugged Out

In several of the gardens I’ve worked in this week, gnats have become a terrible problem. Fortunately, one common maintenance issue seems to be contributing to it: decaying plant material.

Pick, Pick, Pick!

Don’t leave fruit rotting on the vine, and don’t leave wet, dead leaves lying on the soil. As always, I encourage gardeners to pick all of their produce. If something is overripe and you know you’re not going to use it, pick it and dispose of it anyway. Keeping the garden cleaned up minimizes insect activity and can also help reduce disease problems.

You’re likely seeing some dead leaves and branches while you’re picking.

To trim or not to trim? That is the question.

My answer: Snip off what’s truly dead, particularly on the lower stems, but don’t do any hard pruning. These plants are already stressed from a long, difficult growing season. Removing what’s completely dried out is fine, but drastic pruning at this time of year can do more harm than good.

Powdery mildew is another late-summer challenge. By August, squash often begin showing signs of it — the leaves develop a white, powdery coating and may eventually look dried out or dead.

What to do depends on the plant. If your zucchini seems played out for the season, it may be time to simply pull it. If we’re talking about winter squash or pumpkins that still need time to mature, treatment may be worthwhile. Potassium bicarbonate sprays and some copper fungicides like Bonide labeled for use in organic gardening can help manage powdery mildew.

Please read the label and apply accordingly.

Because this year has been particularly stressful, you may also find that some tomato plants have completely stopped producing. If most of the branches have died and there’s no new growth or fruit coming, that plant may simply be finished for the season. Pull it out and make room for a fall crop.

Of course, other tomato plants, having somehow made it through everything this summer has thrown at them, seem perfectly prepared to give us fruit well into fall. Let them!

One last cleanup note: don’t put leaves infected with powdery mildew or other obviously diseased plant material into your compost. I’m particularly careful about tomato plants. If they show any signs of disease, I dispose of them rather than risk carrying a problem into next year’s garden.

End-of-summer gardens can be frustrating, but fall gardens are a blast! Next week, I’ll offer some great crops to plant in late August for an attractive and productive autumn garden.

I’m off to toil in the soil!

Grace