THE LAZY BERKSHIRE GARDENER: Week of August 3, 2023

One plant I haven’t learned well until this season is the invasive purple loosestrife. I haven’t had it in my gardens before, but now that I have a meadow (where anyone can just blow in and show up), the purple loosestrife has crashed the party.

Pick, pick, pick! My priority this week: Keep ahead in the vegetable garden by picking beans and watching for pests, namely cabbage moth caterpillar in the broccoli and Brussels sprouts, as well as striped beetles in the cucumbers.

Tomatoes ripen when overnight temperatures are in the 70s. Keep an eye on them and pick before ripe or you will lose them to marauding critters—voles, birds, slugs, and the like. Leave tomatoes on the kitchen counter to finish ripening and hold their flavor longer.

Pick herbs for drying or use in recipes before they flower to avoid bitterness. If they have already gone to flower, add them to your cut flower bouquets and enjoy their perfume!

My new perennial coneflower plant has not responded well to all the rain. I think the root ball has been too wet, and half the stems have died. It won’t look good this year, but it may come back strong next spring. I might amend the soil around it with some sand or light compost to help break up my clay soil. Coneflowers (Echinacea) can handle drought usually and need well-drained soil—something they have not had this summer.

The daylilies are blooming still—a fresh flower every day! When they finally stop blooming, I’ll remove any seed pods that have formed. Strappy leaves that are still green will be left to photosynthesize and feed the roots for next year. I won’t cut back any leaves until they start to yellow on their own.

The beetles and I have a routine now: I walk by and grab whatever I see and smoosh it. Their numbers seem to be decreasing, or maybe I’m less concerned.

Sadly, my chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) plants have been decimated by voracious beetles. The plants do have new green growth emerging from the base, so hopefully they will resurge next year.

August is when I spread the bio-rational control for Japanese beetles. Bacillus popilliae, known commonly as milky spore, is bacteria that target the larvae of these pests specifically, not other insects. I have spread the product within four feet of the plants most heavily affected by the beetles and watered it into the soil. When the Japanese larvae ingest the bacteria, they die. The bacteria only survive in warm soils, and larvae must be actively feeding for it to work. August and September are the best months to use this product.

The rugosa roses have a dozen beetles on each flower as it begins to open. Whatever. I’m looking to the future. I’ll cut back the rose hips that have formed to a leaf node on the stem and encourage more flower buds. There is still time in the season for growth and flowers in September when, hopefully, the Japanese beetle season will have ended.

Otherwise, I’m devoting a few evenings this week to root out weeds in the flower gardens. By removing young weeds, you avoid having to remove established perennial weeds, and they can be tenacious! Put on your headphones and listen to a book or podcast while you clear the soil surface of nutrient-hogging crabgrass, nightshade, ground ivy, and so on. Keep mowing down any sprouts of bittersweet!

I have finally learned to identify some terrible weeds by picking at a flower bed a few times a week all summer. In spring, I will be able to spot those same nuisance plants and remove them early on.

One plant I haven’t learned well until this season is the invasive purple loosestrife. I haven’t had it in my gardens before, but now that I have a meadow (where anyone can just blow in and show up), the purple loosestrife has crashed the party. It hangs around through the summer looking somewhat like a type of aster or goldenrod. But the flower is a bright raspberry pink/purple panicle of hundreds of smaller flowers. One plant can distribute a million seeds. I cannot let these plants hang out another day in my gardens.

One way to distinguish these plants earlier in the season is the leaves appear directly opposite each other on the stem. The somewhat long and narrow leaves have a prominent center vein. I didn’t want to confuse the loosestrife with wild bergamot, and so, I waited for the plants to get older. The bergamot leaves also form in pairs on opposite sides of the stem but have toothed edges, are wider, and start rounded at the stem before they taper to a point. Plus, wild bergamot has that sweet fragrance when brushed or broken.

When I tried to pull up the loosestrife, stems broke away in my hand with no roots attached. Trouble! Now when removing the loosestrife, I push a spade under the cluster of stems instead of pulling from the top. The stems broke off right at the crown before which is an enlarged root. Be sure to get the whole woody knob out of the ground or more stems will form.

Twenty or 30 invasive crowns later, I think I’ve dug up all the purple loosestrife currently rooting in my yard, but who knows? I may have to get back out there. Meanwhile, coreopsis and lupine seed heads have dried, ready to scatter their genetic code throughout the meadow. As I opened areas by removing the loosestrife, I spread the seeds from my preferred native meadow plants. Maybe not lazy, but highly efficient!

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I call myself the Lazy Berkshire Gardener because I don’t want to work too hard in my gardens. I want to enjoy them. I find it easier to observe my landscape and let the compost happen, the water pool up or daisies to self-sow. I look for ways to do the minimum task for the biggest impact. For example, mulching is better than spraying and much better than weeding all season. I look for beautiful low-maintenance plants that thrive in or at least tolerate my garden conditions. Plus, I’m willing to live with the consequences if I miss something.