Harvesting Fall Squash By Joyce D’Agostino

Photo by Joyce D'Agostino

It goes without saying that Colorado gardeners find that squash is one of the easiest garden vegetables to grow. In fact, about this time many gardeners are wondering what to do with their prolific summer squash that keeps producing and are running out of creative zucchini recipes.

But another squash that deserves some garden space are winter squash. They are called Winter or Fall squash not because they grow during these seasons, but they take all of the summer to grow and mature and have a long shelf life well into the fall and winter. 

Examples of winter squash are Acorn, Butternut and Hubbard. These squash have deep colors and flavorful flesh which make them a great choice for cooking and baking and are full of vitamins, minerals and beta carotene with low or no fat or sugars. 

If you have an abundance of fall squash, you can cook and mash the pulp and freeze as you may do for pumpkins, or you can store them whole in a cool dry location and enjoy them well into the fall and winter. Imagine your own home grown winter squash as a side dish at your Thanksgiving dinner!

Here are a few helpful fact sheets that give you more information about growing, harvesting and storing these beneficial vegetables:

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/1849.html

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/1847.html

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07601.html

Photo by Joyce D'Agostino

Be Careful with Insecticides in Your Garden by Cynthia Cox

Bumble Bee photo courtesy Whitney Cranshaw

You think your flowers are getting buggy, so out comes the insecticide. Beware, you may be harming the bugs that are helping keep your flowers beautiful. Get to know the friends of flower gardens. Here are a few.

The Bumble Bee: Large, fuzzy, with yellow, orange or black bands; may be carrying pollen baskets on its legs; very noisy.  Loves rosemary, clover, and sunflowers (all kinds of sunflowers).

The Native Bee: varies by species as to looks; a non-picky flower lover, loves all kinds of flowers, especially natives!

The Pollen Wasp: has a club antennae; loves western wildflowers (scorpionweed, beard-tongue).This wasp is a vegetarian, feeds on pollen instead of spiders and insects.

The Monarch Butterfly: orange-brown with black veins, lined in black with white spots. Did you know the Monarch feeds on milkweed to make it unpalatable to birds? 

The European Honeybee: smaller than a bumblebee and fuzzy; loves penstemon and  flowers in general.

 The Hoverfly: looks like a yellow jacket, flies like a dart, very quick; loves yarrow and feverfew.  Its larvae is very helpful in that it preys on aphids .

The Bee Fly: looks like a bee only with two wings instead of four; loves desert and alpine flora.

 The Drone Fly: looks like a honeybee but with one set of wings; loves cosmos, Queen Anne’s Lace, and lupine and just like a bee goes from flower to flower. 

So please be careful with that bug spray. A good substitute is Neem Oil found at garden centers and doesn’t harm these friends of flowers.

Impatiens Downy Mildew; New Disease to Colorado by Mary Small

Photo courtesy Purdue.edu

 Two Plant Diagnostic Clinics in Colorado have recently received samples of impatiens downy mildew. This was a large problem last year in many eastern states but not here.

Early symptoms include leaf chlorosis and a stippled appearance similar to spider mite feeding. Leaves may curl under slightly at the edges. Eventually leaves drop and “plants” are merely a grouping of stems. Finally, the stems die too. You will find a dense white sporulation on the leaf undersides.

High plant density, overhead watering (especially at night) and high humidity all contribute to the development of the disease. Once plants are infected, they should be pulled out. There is no rescue treatment fungicide, only preventatives. It will overwinter in our cli- mate, unfortunately.

July rainfall and humid periods (think July 12-15) contributed to the development of the disease. If conditions are dry and air circulation is good, the disease doesn’t develop.

The disease does not seem to develop on impatiens grown from seed, but does on impatiens grown out from cuttings.

Tamla Blunt at the Colorado State University Plant Diagnostic Clinic is tracking the disease’s locations and spread in Colorado. For more information, see this web page: http://www.endowment.org/afe-news/press-releases/221- controlling-downy-mildew-on-impatiens.html

Photo courtesy Palm Beach County Extension

Best Garden Tool! by Donna Duffy

When I retired several years ago, a fellow gardener gave me a Hori Hori knife as a retirement gift. It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. The Hori Hori was originally used for excavating bonsai in the mountains of Japan. Because the tool is small, it’s less destructive than a shovel and can be worked around fragile bonsai roots during excavation. I’ve heard that it’s also called a “diggy diggy.”

The Aster Yellows Blues by Carol King

My latest indignity in the garden, (does it never end) is what appears to be a case of aster yellows in a cone flower, Echinacea purpurea. I’ve been watching the plant all summer and thought it was starting to look pretty good. It’s only three years old and while not really large, it is adequate in size with about a dozen flower blossoms.
Several weeks ago I noticed a Dr. Seussian blossom with funny shaped green things coming out of the flower. My research led me to this condition called aster yellows.

It is a disease carried by the aster leafhopper (Macrosteles quadrillineatus). Aster leafhoppers overwinter in northern Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Come spring, they want to get out of that heat and humidity and so they hitch a ride on the wind and end up in Colorado (and Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.) The leafhopper is infected with this bacteria-like creature and transmits it to susceptible plants. It is also called witches broom, purple top, apical leaf roll, blue stem, bunch top, haywire, late breaking, purple dwarf, and yellow top (English) and is found all over the world.

Herbicide Carry-over Damage by Mary Small

Damage on Ash leaves at the Jeffco Fairgrounds

When I worked in an extension office in another state, a few gardeners reported that their vegetables and flowers started crashing quickly. They also had distorted, stunted growth.  As it turned out, the gardeners applied manure to their gardens earlier in the year.  Unfortunately it was contaminated with an agricultural herbicide. The product was used on pastures where the cattle later grazed. It passed right through the animals’ digestive tract into the manure. Because of the particular product used, gardeners would not be able to grow plants for a while in the areas where the manure was applied.

I was reminded of this incident while attending a class on herbicides (weed killers) last week, because herbicide carry-over and contamination are still happening.

Fresh Summer Pesto By Chef Elizabeth Buckingham

Basil Photo by Elizabeth Buckingham

The current abundance of basil (even in our painfully dry climate!) makes fresh pesto a quintessential summer staple. Most recipes utilize the basics: basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, with cheese as an additional option. This delicious combo is classic for a reason, but is more of a loose concept rather than a precise recipe. The idea is simple: pulverize fresh herbs or greens (pesto refers to the pestle traditionally used to prepare it) and using the basic formula of nuts, seasoning and a little oil, adjust the recipe to suit your tastes and whatever might currently be in season in your own garden.

Genovese basil is named for the Italian port town of Genoa, in Italy’s Liguria region, and the fresh, light cuisine found here allows pesto to really shine - especially when combined with handmade pasta and incredible summer tomatoes. You can make vegan pesto by omitting the cheese, but if you do add cheese please avoid the horrifying green can of processed sawdust at all costs. True Parmigiano costs a fortune, but you’ll only use a bit and the flavor will shine through. Pecorino-Romano, an aged sheep’s-milk cheese, may also be used. Your final dish will only be as good as the ingredients you put in, and since pesto is so utterly simple it is absolutely worth your time and money to seek out the best.

Ascochyta in the Lawn: A Fungus Among Us by Cynthia Cox

Ascochyta Leaf Blight in Lawn.  Photo CSU Extension

Does your lawn have dry brown spots and look like it is dying? Many lawns are suffering from a fungus called Ascochyta, caused by irrigation irregularities and drought stress. Current Lawn disease products will not help remedy this fungus. The good news is, your lawn is not dead, the crown and roots are alive. Look at your grass blade, the blade will be brown from the top down.

Iron Chlorosis by Mary Small

Do your plants have “the yellows”? I’m referring to the sickly yellow-green or bright yellow leaf color that plants sometimes develop. The problem is called chlorosis, the loss of the green pigment, chlorophyll.  In our climate and soil, the most common chlorosis is iron chlorosis, caused by the lack of available iron in the soil or a plant’s inability to absorb it.  Deciduous plants develop pale green or yellow leaves with green veins. As the problem progresses, newly developing leaves are smaller than usual.  Angular brown spots form between the veins and leaf margins can turn brown and crispy. Branch tips may die as well as the entire plant, if left untreated. Evergreens and lawns may have an overall yellow cast.  Lawns may also have scattered bright yellow patches.

Iron chlorosis on maple leaves

Keep Those Summer Blooms Coming! by Carol King and Donna Duffy

Late June and early July are rewarding times in the garden. The results of all the hard labor in the spring are beginning to be evident: a variety of blooms make their first appearance. Those beautiful blooming plants will need some attention to keep the blooms coming back. Most perennials and annuals will benefit from deadheading, pinching, cutting back, and disbudding. It’s not as traumatic as it sounds, and you’ll be rewarded with a longer blooming season.

Cool Garden Apps by Sheilia Canada

Spring is settling in here in the Denver-Metro area. I know that I am encountering a lot of clients that are trying a vegetable garden for the very first time. This can be challenging for us as Master Gardeners because we generally have so much information we can share that the clients eyes will begin to glaze over after about 10 minutes into the conversation. I think some of the first and best advice we can give a newbie-gardener client is reference material!

There is a plethora of gardening books we could suggest. I know my personal library is huge and I am always adding new books that I get a great deal of from Amazon. (As I think about what is currently on my way-too-long “Wish List”) Again, we could list off an intimidating list of gardening for dummies books for the intrepid wanna-be gardener.

Technology to the rescue...

There are several wonderful apps that are great & easy to use reference tools for the new or practiced gardener right on their i-phone, I-pad or android enabled devices. These programs are especially easy to share with the influx of young urban dwellers that are craving that locavore essence to include their own food or gardening resource.

Aphids by Bernadette Costa

Aphids on Leaf

Aphids are very common.  Sometimes called plant lice, they are small, soft-bodied, pear-shaped insects, generally less than 1/8” long.  Most are green or black but they can also be found in a variety of other colors as well.  A characteristic common to all aphids is the presence of cornicles, or tubes, on the back ends of their bodies, sort of like “tailpipes”.  These cornicles secrete substances that help protect the aphids from predators.  Over winter, aphids exist as eggs on perennial plants and hatch in the spring.

Aphids are found on almost all types of plants and a few species can cause plant injury. Some aphid species can curl the new leaves of some types of plant. Feeding aphids excrete honeydew, a sticky fluid that can cause nuisance problems. Natural enemies of aphids include lady beetles, flower fly larvae, lacewing larvae, and parasitic wasps.