Friday PhotoEssay
The handout from today’s Lunch in the Garden is available on that page, including this week’s recipe, Spring Lemon & Thyme Dressing. Yum! Thanks to Lisa for sharing this recipe with us!
Everything may not be “coming up roses” in the Demo Garden right now, but there sure are a lot of things in bloom! Herbs, squash, flowers, and more every day. Sadly, one thing that isn’t going to be producing any more roses is the climbing rose bush that was on the trellis of our Quiet Garden.
The rose had just started putting on some new growth after being pruned, and that new growth came out dark red with excessive thorniness – a sign of Rose Rosette, an incurable disease. Any rosebush with this disease needs to be removed ASAP. For all the sad, gory details about Rose Rosette, you can view the K-State Fact Sheet.
The tomato plant with the best looking fruit right now is the ‘Orange Blossom’ Tomato. It is a determinate, and it does have a much smaller plant than some of the others. It looks like it’s going to have a nice crop of early fruit!
The Monarda (sometimes called Bee Balm) is in bloom in the center of the herb garden. I’m not sure why some of it is lighter pink – maybe it’s a different variety and I just didn’t realize it.
It’s so pretty that it almost makes you think that grasshopper is harmless! Yeah, right. There are tons of tiny grasshoppers hopping all over right now. They are cute enough, except that they will become huge, destructive grasshoppers by the end of the summer!
This is a flashback to the end of last summer…now that’s a big grasshopper! You could really sink your teeth into one of those. (Yes, I’m kidding…sort of.)
I’ll leave you with this as your warm, fuzzy picture for the weekend. This is one of our thyme plants that is just gorgeous right now. (There, is that better than another grasshopper picture?)
Posted on June 18, 2010, in PhotoEssays and tagged flowers, herbs, insect problems, Tomatoes. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
The Demo Garden Blog 
are roly-poly bugs a good thing or bad for the garden. What can you do about the grasshoppers? beside trying to catch them
Roly polys aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but they can be in wet conditions, especially if your plants are too close together. Roly polys need wet conditions to survive and will eat wet, rotting leaves, and sometimes live leaves too.
Grasshoppers are a real pain. They are easiest to kill when they are tiny, but even then it’s hard. There are no organic products to use. Permethrin, lambda-cyhalothrin, and carbaryl (Sevin) all kill grasshoppers, but you have to reapply regularly.
I use an organic product on my grasshoppers: Anas platyrhynchos domesticus, applied daily. You just have to be careful not to actually get it in the garden directly, as it’s a defoliant as well.
LOL! Well, our duck in the Demo Garden is still religiously sitting on her eggs, so she’s not doing much in the way of grasshopper eating…or leaf eating for that matter!