Dakota Growing
Dakota Growing Ep. 42 - August Woes and Bug Wars
[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Dakota Growing. I'm Kelsey Deckert, your horticulture agent here in Burley County, joined in the Radio Access Studio by my co-host, Tom Cobb. And he has two extension horticulturists. How are we doing? Everything's good. We're in August. That's right. That's right. Here we are. Countdown to school. Back to school, coming. And luckily, the weather's cooling off. Yeah. Survived the global warming now. Of a couple of weeks in July, which is normal. Now we've got a couple of weeks of-- I always thought August was a very hot time. I always thought even my childhood, like football two days, you know, August, it was really like brutal weather. But for whatever reason this year, we got a nice, cool stuff going on. But no frost. No frost. We're not ready for that. We don't want frost yet. No, not at all. Got over a month still for that. Still getting ample rain. The rain showers been coming. You get any hail at your place? Just a little bit. Just a little bit, just a few pea sized hail. Nothing, no. Just a little bit of excitement, but nothing destructive. Yeah, so not last weekend, but the week and before, my sister got like golf ball size hail at her place. So kind of interesting. You know, yeah. Really a golf ball? That big for real. Oh, yeah. They had them in their hands and everything. So I would hurt. Yeah, luckily, not too bad a damage, but it's interesting when they don't live terribly far to our place. And I was like, well, thank God it didn't come this way, you know? So I've been a little bit of wickedness with the hail. No tornadoes around this area, which is good. That's right. No hurricanes, no typhoons. Oh, you know, every place in the world has a few problems, but-- That's right. I think last week with the warm temperatures, it's just a good reminder why we live in North Dakota. Why? Why wouldn't they be able to take that hotness all the time, that high temperatures? Man, not my cup of tea. Is it? But yes, of course we see that, but we are in a vast minority-- Because there's 800,000 fools like us and 300-some million other Americans who laugh at us. Oh, I don't know. I'm not here for the weather. That's right. You want to hear what's going on? Yeah, why not? OK. I mean, bug gardening. Oh, just landscape. Just what's going on in the landscape. I kind of narrowed it down to the top. Oh, really? Three prevalent, repetitive questions I've been getting. Hot topics today. Sure. Any breaking news? No, nothing new. Just nothing new. Nothing new. Just got to talk about it. OK, well, give me a refresher course. I like it. OK, well, I started off with a nice sunflower photo for you, since you love sunflowers. I just went and took this to Floyd. I was like, look at how I got the sun up at the community garden. Oh, really? You took that picture? I did. Yeah, as a calendar worthy. Good. I don't see any negative today. OK. I figured you'd probably know what type those are. Those are only maybe four feet tall, pretty small. That's a classic ornamental type. There's lots of varieties that could be gold rush. There's a lot of varieties like that. Beautiful. Yeah. All those branches of flowers. Well, I had to start beautiful before we get into the destructiveness, right? OK, sure. OK, we're going to talk aphids, right? So symptoms. People always calling in about the twisted curled leaves, also kind of the puckered looking leaves. I think the most common thing we always hear is the shininess, the stickiness, the porches, right? You always got that stickiness on the porches. And then, in some cases, you notice the sooty mold, too, like in the photo that I have on some pine trees there. So again, when the aphids are basically pooping out there, their honeydew can turn into that sooty mold. So-- And a blackish crease. Blackish, kind of yuck on there. So again, what do aphids look like? They're about 1/16, 1/8 inch, with that pear-shaped body. Lots of different colors. I think most commonly you see kind of that translucent green, even like red, black, yellow, brown, gray. I see more of those probably on our plants in the garden than on the trees. And then the key characteristic, as I have circled here in that picture that you see are those two tailpipes that come out of the abdomen. So a good picture of like an immature aphid, and then a larger aphid. And also know that they can have wings as well. Well, they're insects. Well, that's right. Every insect has wings. You all right? Yeah, of course. And six legs. That's right. See, I learned that-- Three body parts, right? You got it. That's right. Sounds good to me. OK. There are plenty of them. So what do we do? Trees. I'm going to focus on trees here. But even in the garden, talk about it. You want to take the simple route. Just get a high-pressurized water spray at them. Knock them off the trees. Knock them off your plants. Tom, when you go, what do you always talk about the Clint Eastwood approach, right? That's right. Do you do that with aphids on trees? Do you feel that way the same? Listen, you know. You've got to calm down. Calm down. That's exactly it. Like that tree's got like a zillion leaves. And the leaves are pretty much-- Still green, probably. And they're pretty much done for the year. We're in August. You could drop every-- you could have a giant, enormous aphids form come to your tree, eat every leaf. And the tree would be fine at this time of year. So you know, for example, I was healthy. So when it comes to trees and aphids, just calm down. And you're in there more stress than the tree is. That's right. And also, the thing is I can talk about the curles. How the heck can you get the-- Underside. The aphids are in the curl. That's right. So they're kind of shielding. So yeah, if it feels good, blast away on your tree. But also, how are you going to get so-- like, what if you've got a 50-foot tall tree? How are you going to get them? So it doesn't matter. It's just nature and the tree's just kind of-- it's just like being tickled a little bit. That tree's just fine. It's not under-- You also have a lot of natural enemies. So again-- Yeah, ladybugs, man. Relax. Look, ladybugs, they can eat hundreds. I don't know, how many of these guys eat these? Like, a few thousand per ladybug. They just munch on these aphids. They're so soft and delicious. Yeah. You know, just like cotton candy on them. I mean, I was going to say, or like go into the movie theater, right? Popcorn. Yeah, they probably-- the aphid bodies probably does pop a little bit when you puncture it. So yeah, kind of crunchy. Yeah, so yeah. Relax. That's sort of comes out. In a garden, you know, that's a-- garden's different, though, because if they're covering your plant or covering your pepper plant, then you could lose that. I mean, if they're really swarmed, they can cause damage. So then you've got to take action. And a jet spray of water can help. But maybe you want to take a go after them with the pesticides. Is that what you would do? Like you, I'm going to relax. But in the garden-- remember, I don't have a garden this year, so I'm not seeing them, but I actually haven't had a lot of questions in regards to aphids in the gardens this year. Just really the trees is where I've been in them. This reminds me, I remember what, in my younger days, I had a hunger-free garden, but it was like five acre garden. And we-- Oh, that's a small farm. Yeah, we had an aphid infestation and eaten our greens and had a big argument with some of my volunteers, as far as what to do. And what do you decide? I said, I'm in charge. Yeah. So I took charge. And I am like a-- I'm a dictator sometimes. I'm kind of cruel. And I said, man, we're growing food for the poor, not for aphids. So the hell, let's get out that-- let's go get some insecticide and blast these suckers and save our crop. So we did. But I didn't like that. I don't like conflicts. It's like 30 years ago, I still remember that conflict. But they were kind of easy-going people, but that's where my Clint Eastwood approach came out and saying, you stay out of my territory, you sick-legged critter. I'm going to get you. You know, I think a lot of times when I'm talking with clients about trees and stuff, again, they're seeing them over the porches. The porches are sticky, the cars. So that's when I just talk about removing that honeydew and using like a dish detergent or even-- you have to get a little tougher a tar remover. But I think dish detergent can work real well on those. Yeah, if it's your car, just park somewhere else. It's true. How about that? Well, maybe you don't have a garage. Yeah, I mean, just park on the street. You know, just park a little bit. Park don't park underneath the tree. Yeah. Park underneath something else. That's true. No, I'm trying to cope with aphids. Aphids are-- they're amazing reproducing animals. They can-- they're just like incredible. I think something about-- they can just be-- they can turn themselves into a female. Oh, wow. Did they have like this weird-- Well, I didn't know that. They've got unusual habits. They don't need partners. They're like mutants. Yeah, they're-- they can't-- like, when they want to reproduce, they reproduce, kind of fun. Yeah. OK, let's go to the next problem, huh? Next concern. And again, we've talked about this in the past, but still, I am seeing lots of apple scab out there. So again, you know, if you're seeing like yellowing, falling leaves, that's usually what people say. Like, my apple tree's got a lot of yellow leaves. It's shedding. If you look at the leaves, like this one that I have in the picture, you start to see those round velvety olive green spots. Again, they can get large up to about half an inch in size. But then those spots are going to eventually become dark brown and even black. If you do have it on apple trees, you've talked in the past about how the fruit can be affected. And it can even get like quirky. So kind of the question is, is like, how does it spread so that fungus is going to overwinter in the infected leaves? So again, here's the same tree. You can see those infected leaves at the bottom. And then also, the spores are going to be carried by the wind in the rain. You know, obviously, looking at this picture, there was a whole other issue I had to approach with this homeowner. What do you see there? Well, are you talking about the landscape fabric? You bet. Kind of choking the tree a little bit there. Yeah, you had to talk about removing that and getting that out of there. So what do we do about scab? Just like you've mentioned, let's rake up those leaves. Let's get them out of the area. And then during our dormant season, let's go ahead and let's prune our canopy, open it up for more air light and sun flow. And again, kind of alleviate that pressure for next year. Another thing, calm down. You don't need to go get fungicides out there. Think you need to do something to get rid of those spots immediately. Well, as the sun goes, it's too late, baby. It's just too late to try to make it. Yeah, it's too late, baby, because there's no curative on the side. You've got to prevent with fungicides. So it's too late. It's already here. Again, you're in August. We've got to deal with it. You've got the scab. If it's scab, scab is not a fatal. It's not a deadly disease. I mean, it was devastating for several years in a row. But everything you said is so right. You've got to get the darn disease out from underneath the tree. That's where it comes from year after year. Crew on the tree, get more airflow. And then if you want to spray the tree, when the leaves are just popping out, that's the key time. Because those young leaves don't have any wax protection on them. And if we get a wet spring again next year, we're going to scab to be an issue. But I told you to do a story about like one time when I was a county agent, and a woman called me like, she's, I think she's like in her 40s or 50s. And she's telling me about wondering about what to do about her trees, leaves are dropping, her apple trees dropping. And then you remember the story. And then I said, don't worry, that tree's going to be fine. It's just got apple scab. It's going to, and she goes, go, what, what? Yeah, the tree's going to come back next year, no problem. And she just dropped a phone and ran out to the backyard because her husband was revving up the chainsaw ready to cut down the tree. So that was a close call. Look at you saving the world. One tree at a time out there. Time to go. Yeah, so, but you know, like, you kind of got a theme here about how trees are so tolerant to environmental stresses. And they've been through this rodeo before. And they'll go through it again, so. Yeah, no worries. Yeah, I think so. No worries. So last week, we talked actually out in like our statewide call about fall webworm. Any questions? Any calls coming in? I haven't had any. And we're right on the cusp of it. What are they coming? Yeah. And on choke cherry, they seem to have a thing for choke cherry trees. I'm just going to talk everything I got to talk about. That's all I'm going to say. I'm just going to say, I've had one pitcher so far of a small web that came in this photo. This is from a couple of years ago. This is not a photo that I got this year or anything. But just like you said, commenting those choke cherries, apples, birch, and even elm trees. What do we need to do? Again, don't need to get out there and cut out branches, cut down the trees, anything like that. Can break up that nest, place that nest in like a bucket of soapy water, or just break it up, break it up with the judge stream of water. And then if you need that immediate kill, that revenge. Of course, you can look at pesticides, yeah. Yeah, I've done that before. Makes you feel good? Carbrol on a web worm nest. Whoo. Just like a nuclear bomb. Instant gratification, all those. Those guys, all suckers, just drop to the ground. Shake and shiver, and that's the end of them. Don't mess around with my tree. But I don't know. What else do you want to say about it? That's it. I think I want to transition since we got a bug theme going on, and you're talking about being a dictator. I hear there's-- Oh, I'll just calm down. I'm a nice dictator, you know. I was thinking there was maybe-- Benevolent King, I was in that garden. But you know, the other thing with that web worm, again, the theme is, it doesn't really matter, because those web worms are only eating leaves, OK? They're not going to eat your whole darn tree, wood, and all. They're just going to eat the leaves. So who cares about the leaves? The leaves are turning yellow soon and dropping. So you don't have to do anything about web worms if you don't want to. You can just ignore it if you want to, and just walk inside and watch the Vikings play football instead of whatever you like doing. But if you want to kill them, go ahead. Kill them all. You don't have to. OK. So now it's my turn. That's right. OK. Well, like you say, we're talking about bugs today, because a lot of bugs out there. There is a lot of bugs out there. Bug wars. And but in general, I'm going to talk mostly about the garden, not so much about trees myself here. And the garden's been good this year because of the rain, and the harvest have been wonderful. We're getting wonderful crisp lettuce. Yeah. Have a bounty of beans and the sweet corns coming in. Absolutely delicious. And broccoli, good broccoli crop, and then also the cabbage looks good, too. But all this, all this vegetables look good to us. However, it also looks good to our enemy, the bugs. And one type of bugs active right now are flea beetles. They're taking to have like black clouds come out of like especially canola fields after the harvest. And just swarm. They love it. This is not a brussel sprout. Those aren't holes, huh? No, those are with black bugs. There's like 1,000 on one plant. And now that's brussel sprouts. So who cares? They can have that. [LAUGHS] You know, what do you think about brussels sprouts? Certain ways they're cooked, I'll eat them. You know, add in the bacon. I'll put a bacon with it. Put the bacon. To hide the flavor. Fry them in some bacon grease, and they'll be good. There you go. Rapham and bacon. Wow. Then you can eat them. And you can eat the brussels sprouts. But here's the closest one, the flea beetles, the shiny black beetles. And they make all these shot holes all over the place. Another bug that's starting to get active now are like a fancy white butterflies. Actually, they're moss of the imported cabbage worm. They're like white moss with a black spot on the wing. And I often see them like dancing on top of my broccoli and cabbage. And when they're not really dancing, they're laying eggs. They're getting busy on my plant. And when I see the dancing happening, then I don't wait until-- Mean to war. Yeah, I don't wait until it's too late, baby. It's not too late. I take action. And here it is. And I think it's interesting about a lot of these moss is the men like to get together at the local mud hole before the breeding season starts. They like to-- what they're doing is they're swapping stories. And also, they're trying to collect some minerals out of the clay or the soil there. And then they get some salts. And they have more reproductive success that way. So that's like-- So what's your weapon of choice? Well, it's common. It's common, OK. There's a lot of options. A lot of options, huh? I'm not here to tell you what to do. Do you want to start a small? I'm not a dictator. I'm here to give you options. OK, that's good. I'm here to educate and give you options, Kelsey. So this one-- this male had a successful breeding expedition in the end, a lot of the children. Here's a big imported cabbage worm. There's a teenager. Blends right in, looks like. Yeah, right. Camouflage, but they lose their camouflage because they eat all the holes around. So there's not much camouflage here. And this picture of a holy cabbage. So as I've said before, what do you-- some people get sad when their cabbage crop is full of holes. But I don't get sad. You get mad? I get mad. Oh, there you are. I want to get even. So if you like to have-- there's different ways to approach your enemy. There is. Do you want to, like, kill them immediately at guillotine type, like rip your dead? Then there's some synthetic pyrethroids. These are synthetic chemicals. These are probably the most popular ones. Seven, garden tech seven, which is a zeta-cyber-meathrim that every garden center. And BONIGHT thought they'd be kind of cute. So instead of seven, they called theirs eight. So I guess that's better. But I don't-- I don't ever got the name seven. They never-- they didn't spell it right. [LAUGHTER] How did that ever happen? Must have been probably a translator in the French or something. European scientists invented it. I don't know what happened, but seven and eight are very common. But now also-- so these are these synthetic pyrethroids. They will kill very quickly and give you a great sense of immediate revenge. But they're toxic. They're toxic. And so you have to follow a label carefully. You have to follow the recommended rates. And there'll be a re-entry interval. You have to wait after you spray until you harvest. So you know, use these. They're very effective. But they're-- and they cover-- they kill a broad spectrum of insect pests. But then that's a problem also, because they've killed-- there's a lot of beneficial insects. They kill local ladybugs. They'll kill bees. So you have to be careful with them, follow the label carefully. The tomatoes are getting-- are being harvested too. And this is one of my favorite insects that are attacking now. They are cool, OK? The tomato or tobacco hornworm with those scary eyeballs. It's a big green caterpillar. That's scary eyeballs going down the side in a horn that we're in to scare away the enemies. They come built in with a sword already. That's right. They're very vicious. But also very hungry. So this is what I call the garden glutton. Even a scientific name, manduka. Manduka means glutton. And that's because this particular insect eats four times its weight every day. Four times-- that means like, OK, I'm over 200 pounds. That means I have to eat 800 pounds of food every day. That's incredible. That's a lot. They're just trying to become obese, huh? They want to. They increase in size 1,000 times in three weeks. It's like a cat turns into an elephant in three weeks. They are very large. They are. Like, when you see pitchers or people or like, got them on their plants, it's crazy to see the size. Like, I also think-- I think it's a sphinx moth that a cat-- like, when it's in the caterpillar, it's just huge. This will turn into a moth, a sphinx moth that a lot of people confuse with hummingbirds. It looks just like a hummingbird. It's so big. Yeah, they're fascinating critters. Now, you heard about seven or eight. Now, my favorite insecticide for hornworms is 13. Have you ever heard of 13? I haven't. That's my special. That's the size of my shoe. So what I do is I pick them off the plant and I step on them with my size 13 shoe. Squish, squish. Very effective. So Friday the 13th. That's right. [INAUDIBLE] But don't forget about 13. Yeah, I mean, they're not that many of them usually. Usually, you just see one or two on a plant. And maybe they're cannibalistic. A lot of times, a lot of these kind of critters, they eat their brothers and sisters. And so there's usually only a few of them around on the plant. But I don't know for sure if a hornworm is cannibalistic. But when I see it, I only see, first of all, I never see it because it's camouflaged as well. I only see it when I see the damage. It goes, what the heck? I'm losing about a fourth of my plant overnight. What happened? And then you see that critter there. And so I just pick it off and throw it on the ground and squish it with my foot. That's the end of that guy. That's easy. So my foot is one natural insecticide. And there's other options of natural insecticides too. And we can talk about them now. So in a pyrethrin, and there's a bacterium called buscellus thuringiensis, we call it BT, BT. And spinosad, and then as a directin, which is the neem, and then insecticidal salt. So each one of these natural insecticides, like my foot has special benefits and are shortcomings. You mentioned pyrethrin, actually, going after aphids. Yeah, pyrethrin comes from chrysanthemums. And a good thing about a pyrethrin, if you like it, it kills immediately. It paralyzes the pest immediately. It's like a nerve agent. So they shake, shiver, and get paralyzed immediately. Pyrethrin's control many different kinds of pests. And they break down rapidly. So they're really only good for one or two days, that's it. So they break down rapidly in sunlight. And so it's kind of a good idea to spray in the early evening hours. So you have a longer time for it to be active. And then it only works for about a day or two. That's it, the chemical breaks down rapidly now. So it doesn't give you much duration of protection. But since it breaks down rapidly, it doesn't-- you can harvest rapidly. So there's pluses of mine as far. Pyrethrin is fairly-- all these natural insecticides, like my foot, they're very low in toxicity to you. So you don't have to worry about-- compared to like that 7 and 8, which are much more toxic to humans. We talked about bacillus dern gensus. That's a soil bacterium. This has been around for a long time. And the common trade names, as I list here in the biomes, dipel and thurside. BT has to be eaten by the past. And the nice thing about that, once it eats, it's actually-- so it won't kill right away. It won't paralyze. It gets us tummy-ing. It takes like a two-day-old gut rot. So you know, like some people, like we talk about Clint Eastwood today, like to see that immediate death. But maybe you like the torture you're in for a couple days. Do you like that? Smosh them struggle. Yeah, two days. Let them suffer, come on. Yeah, I'm not going to let you get away so easily. I'm going to have you suffer for a couple days and then die. And the thing with BT, there's different types of strains of BT out there. The most common one is highly specific for caterpillars. So that means it won't kill bees. For example, it won't kill-- it won't kill mites, it only kills caterpillars. We got to read the-- there's different types of BT. Some will go after beetles. Some won't. But the most common types only kill caterpillars. So that means it won't harm beneficial insects. It won't harm ladybugs, for example. OK, so that's a good option. And I think that one that's really got a lot of momentum to know what Spino said. This is a natural soil bacterium that they discovered in a distillery in the Caribbean. They found that in the soil of a rum distillery. And Spino said causes spasms. Now, you spray or the bug gets exposed to it. It will have spasms for two days. Shaken and shaven for two days before it dies. That's suffering. That's suffering. That's a good feeling. And a nice thing about Spino said, it controls many a wide range of insect pests and mites too. And I think the most common practice yet garden centers is Captain Jack's dead bug brew from bow and egg. So Spino said has a lot going for it. I have to say. And then as the direct in which it comes from the neem tree seeds, this chemical has to be eaten by the past. And so it's safe to bees, because bees aren't interested in eating your cabbage or anything that bees are flying. And they don't want to eat your cucumber leaves or whatever. They just want to pollinate. So neem is very safe for bees. And the way neem works is it's a feeding repellent. So when a pest gets exposed to neem, it loses its appetite. And then also its hormones go out of whack. And so it doesn't develop into an adult. And so it just kind of slowly withers away as a worthless teenager, pretty much. So does it reproduce her? So it controls neem controls a lot of pests and come in different forms. The last one's insecticidal soap. And you know, like they say, soap dries your skin, right? Yeah. Is that a problem for you? Yeah, I kind of, in general, have probably dryer skin, especially in the winter time I'm back. It's so itchy. So yeah. Well, I don't recommend insecticidal soap. Yeah, I probably could shower with that. In fact, the soaps desiccate the pest. It dries them out. And so it works again, so soft bodied pests like aphids you talked about in caterpillars. But soap has no residual. That means you've got to physically spray the bug. So a bug that flies onto the point an hour later won't be affected because it wants to soap strike. So you have to spray a lot of time. So in a garden, I'm not really into insecticidal soap because it's got no residual. I've got to have, I've got to have, I can't, I can't worry about kneeling every bug. Right. I mean, like, they're all worldly, trying to underside of leaves. They've got to underside. Bugs hang out on the underside of leaves usually. And so this is something, insecticidal soap, I particularly, oh, it's so safe though, you know, it's so safe. They're like house plants, right? Yeah, I like house plants because then it's manageable. It's just a plan or two to spray and soak. So, okay, so that's my bug worth. I got a few other things to throw in here. All right. Are these some horse shorts? These are some horse shorts for a Kelsey. And we got the tomato fungal diseases going to starting out. And also powdery mildew, getting quite a few questions about that. I like this photo here because it really shows how the older leaves are affected. Yeah, they're the ones that get the first infection in solar. Powdery mildew, it's catch night, not only on like pumpkins and squash, but we see this on lilacs and, oh, I had an instance with current bushes recently. So it's getting active now. It likes humidity, it's what it likes. So, in general, to combat fungal diseases, I don't want to use overhead sprinkling. I want to keep the leaves dry because fungus likes moisture, it likes humidity. And so you can irrigate in the morning. And there's chemicals we can use to prevent it, like coral thalo now, which is, tradiums are dachinol and bravo. And mancozab and organic people can use sulfur or copper. But, you know, bring your reading glasses to the garden center. Look at the active ingredients and picked up proper chemical. Do you have anything about fungal diseases, especially in a vegetable garden? There's so many good, resistant varieties. But just forget about those heirloom varieties. Man, they are just like so worthless when we can have a modern variety that resist the disease naturally. And, you know, when I'm talking about GMOs here, we don't get that, we can't buy that at a garden center. There's no GMOs, none of that. These are just modern varieties where scientists have found the natural genes that resist the diseases. So, like, we've got pottery mildew resistance for pumpkins and for squash and zucchini. We've got that resistance. We've got, like a lot of these tomato diseases, just the last 10 years, they've made amazing progress in finding varieties that resist tomato diseases. So, you know, take advantage of those modern varieties and look for ones that resist diseases. Okay, last thing I want to talk about is hunger. You know, we've got the hunger themes here, I guess, using a bug-worth theme here. So, this is, I got a sick apple tree here in the person. It looks so pale, look at those leaves, just yellow, just, they should be rich and green, but they're generally yellow. Whenever you see an entire tree showing the problem, I say, okay, what do they all have in common? They all have the same trunk. And so, you focus down at the base of the tree. So, there's those pale leaves. And look at the trunk, man, this poor tree, you know, it's been weed-wacked, big time. And so, you see how the trunk's been damaged, the bark's been damaged. And when you start seeing that orange coloration, you know, this is what we call a pocket of disease, like a canker. So, you know, the most precious wood of a tree is located just beneath the bark. That's where the new growth comes. The new growth comes from just beneath the bark. It's not from the inner core of the tree. That's pretty much, that's not very active wood. It's beneath the bark is where all the action is. And so, that's where the new growth comes, and that's where a lot of water and nutrients flow. And so, when you weed-wacker, you get the lawn mornin', you scrape that. Poor, soften tree, you're gonna disrupt the flow of water and nutrients. And so, this guy's got a bad vascular system, and it can't pump up the nutrients out of the soil. And so, you know, this guy's just sad. You know, it's just sad. And sometimes they, I mean, you can't, once you got a pocket of disease in the wood, you can't spray it out. It's embedded in the wood extensively. So, sometimes a tree can wall it off. It wants to live. It's trying to live, it's trying to fight the disease, but in many cases, it's just sad. - It came over, huh? - It slowly, slowly, slowly, you know, yeah, that's good. So, instead of weed-wacking, mulch around your trees, use some shredded bark mulch, and use the lesson of 333. The mulch would be at least three feet in diameter. If you want to go 10 feet, more power to you. The tree will love you for that. But at least three feet in diameter, and three inches thick, and keep mulch three inches away from the trunk, okay? Three, three, three. Okay, three feet in diameter, three inches thick, and no mulch within three inches of the trunk. 'Cause if you put it near the trunk, that's gonna, the voles are gonna like live in there. And you can get trunk rot, too. So, don't do that. So, use shredded bark mulch. It's a wonderful thing for trees, and forget about those darn weed-wackers, and lawnmowers, be very careful. The last photo about hunger is that somebody shared me their photo, their potato crop, and it's all, the leaves are yellow, and it's a general yellow again. So, these are starving plants, and you can see, like, they need nitrogen. And so, this person hadn't fertilized this year. They thought, they just naturally thought their garden was fertile enough. But when you see general yellowing, and then nitrogen can move in a plant, and the young leaves, they're very aggressive. They will steal it from the old leaves. Those young leaves are not nice. They will steal it from the old leaves. And so, especially if you see green on the top, and yellow on the older leaves, that guy needs some nitrogen big time. And so, like, you know, cold blue, cold blue, the fastest way to help this poor person, this poor potato plant, is give them a shower of miracle grow, or a foliar fertilizer. I didn't know this before, but plants can drink through their leaves. I always thought they'd drink only through their roots, but they can drink through their leaves, too. - Yeah. - It's kind of weird. And that's the fastest way to feed. And so, like, a miracle grow shower, oh, they would be so happy about that. And they would get the fertilizers they need. Or if you don't want, if that's too much work, you know, get a granular fertilizer, you know, what we call it, chemical fertilizer, let's say 10, 10, 10, or something. The first number is the nitrogen. That's the most important for almost all plants. And so, scatter that around there, work it in, you know. Organic fertilizer is like, oh, peat moss and manure, they're slow acting. So that's, this guy's starving today. It doesn't want to wait a week for his next meal. So, get that guy a shower of miracle grow. So, that's what I got as far as the bug war and other activities. - So, would you say there's hope for that potato plant if he gets after it? - Yes, yes, well, you know, sometimes, okay, what I say about this, first of all, is it shouldn't have got this bad. - All right. - You know, you know, they should have spent more time regarding and enjoy their plants. - Loving, singing to them, all of those. - Don't get praying, that helps to have heard. But at least talking to them and visit, just visit with your plants and say, oh my gosh, you look honey out. Oh my goodness, what can I do to help you? Oh, oh, I bet you need a little food now. Just like, you know, just like when you visit grandma and grandpa, the first, oh, you look like you can use a cookie or something here. You need a little food. - Are you sure you need to have this try this? - You're so skinny, you know, get some bones on you. You know, you're all bones, you know. So, get some food, you know. And so, that's what this person should have told their potato plant like a couple weeks ago, more ago. So, when you start really seeing suffering, okay, it hasn't, it's not an overnight healing job. So, it's yield is gonna be lower this year. So, when you can really start seeing, this isn't hidden hunger, like we call it's a hidden hunger. This is like a real loud hunger. It's like screaming at me, like, I'm starving, help me. So, there's hope for this guy, but their yields are not gonna be, they're not gonna, it's not gonna be a bumper crop, let's say that. - Okay, I'm good to know. - So, what else, what else? Now it's gonna cool off now, so. - Is it, are we gonna stay cool though? - I doubt it. - I kinda doubt it too. I think there's some hot days yet ahead of us. - Yes, but what else we can talk about, I know, you know, now it's a good time to plant spinach if you want to. This is a good week to plant spinach and keep it so cool if you can. You know, get some moisture in the ground, help that spinach germinate, and you can still spinach crop this year. And I think that's about it as far as I can think about, like, what's really timely right now? - Right. - Just spend some time, enjoy the harvest, pick on a regular basis, you know, because if you pick on a regular basis, then the plants will keep producing for ya, okay? Just like deadheading flowers. Keep deadheading your flowers. You know, the other thing I wanna say about like fertilizing is that with that sick tree. Like, I really, once you're past mid-July, I think you have to be cautious about fertilizing, like fruit trees. - Right. - I don't wanna produce more new succulent growth heading into winter. So like for that apple tree, I would just kind of say, I mean, you're now like, you're just really sick. I think I'm just gonna let you just kind of go and head into winter and we'll fertilize you in the spring. So be cautious about fertilizing trees, especially at this time. Okay, we don't wanna push off, push out new succulent growth with our vicious blizzard. - Destructive winter, the forecast is every year that we have. So, but like a potato plant, you mean you're gonna die anyhow from frost, so you might as well- - Give you the IV. - Give you the IV right now. So, it's okay. But you know, your plants, again, if you look for pea, if you peel leaves in your garden, that's a sign that you need a little, pick me up. - That's right. I think that's all we got for today. - That's all we got, good. - We'll be back in a couple weeks here and stuff. - Got it. - So as always, we just wanna thank everybody who is listening, hopefully out there on podcasts and those who are watching as well. So, thank you and we'll see you on the next episode. - Dakota Growing is a gardening show brought to you by Dakota Media Access and NDSU Extension. We discuss a variety of timely topics pertaining to your landscape along with giving you tips and advice for your lawn, garden, and trees. If you have questions, call 701-221-6865 or email ndsu.burly.extension@ndsu.com. Dakota Growing airs on Radio Access 102.5 FM, Community Access Channel 12 or 612HD or online at freeTV.org. (gentle music) (upbeat music)