Wow. That’s what I get for taking time off last week. Spent some time with my daughters up north. My job is to hold the dock down so it doesn’t blow away.

But you guys decided to fill my mailbox while I was away. LOL! I’m still digging out and trying to get to the mail.

Didn’t finish judging the other contest either as I’m working on some projects that pay the bills. :-) Funny how you have to do that every now and then. But its on my to-do list and the first sort through has been done and the possible winners identified.

The red tide of tomatoes is upon us. There’s a recipe for tomato “stuff” below sent in by a reader. I may have to try this one as it looks simple enough for my kitchen skills.

Spend some time out in the flower garden this week, do a smell test and see if you can identify any fragrance coming from your flowers. If you stick your nose into flowers, you’ll often be pleasantly surprised at the gentle, fresh fragrance that’s there. Try it – let me know what you find.

NEW CONTEST ALERT

There’s a contest announced below in the question section. Check it out and see if somebody in your family qualifies.

New Articles for You

All my new articles are listed here. Click on the archives link at the site to see others.

Want to ask a question? Click here to ask a gardening question.www.gardening-tips-perennials.com/askagardeningquestion.html

Your Questions Answered

I have a home that the previous owners never reseeded after the builder threw down minimal junk seed. I now have a lawn (weeds more than grass) that is not lush or green at all.. do I kill the lawn and start from scratch or till, seed heavily, then weed and feed later ??? help !!!!

A: Interesting question. I’ve written about lawn renovation before (most of the articles are on beginner-gardening.com. The question here is which way to go – a renovation or a repair job. The short answer is that you can go either way.

But you don’t need weed and feed.

My .02

Want a Better Lawn than the Neighbors?

If you start this fall with a seed top-dressing and compost application, you’re going to see a thickening of the turf. If the grass is really thin and ugly – go with 5 to 6 pounds of grass seed per 1000 square feet rather than the recommended 2 pounds. Use double the amount of compost and peat moss to increase the organic matter.

This is the primary goal. Get the turf thick. Get it healthy and growing well and the weeds will begin to disappear by themselves. They will not be able to compete with the grass. That’s what grass does.

Repair is the easiest way to go and the cheapest and will give you results next year you can live with.

I’m going to also suggest you invest the money in the lawn book on these pages. Unless you care for your own lawn properly, you’re going to wind up right back in the same spot asking the same question in a few years. And then you won't be able to impress the neighbbors at all.

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I have some Rudbeckia 'Goldstrum,' which I know is susceptible to powdery mildew (and I read your article about how to treat it), but the leaves are turning brown, not the common gray-white powdery dusting on the leaf surfaces. However, a nearby syringa vulgaris appears to have this type of dusting. So, I wonder if the problem with the rudbeckia is powdery mildew or something else (and if the problem and treatment of the syringa the same).

A: The treatment for any of the common leaf spot fungus problems and powdery mildew are pretty much the same. The interesting thing about powdery mildew is that it expresses itself differently on different plants. You’ll see that white dusting on lilacs for sure. On roses, you might see the white dusting but you’ll definitely see the twisted and curling new growth. On Rudbeckia and other perennials, you’ll see more of a browning leaf rather than the white dusting although if you look closely with a scope, you’ll be able to see the dusting.

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Can a container grown hybrid tea rose be moved to a basement in winter? The basement stays around 50 degrees all winter long. If so, should I leave it in the container? If it stays in the container, should it be watered? Thanks for your help!!

A: I’ve overwintered roses in containers or large clay pots before with no problem. 50F is too warm, the rose will not go dormant and stay dormant. You’ll get weak spindly growth and then not much performance the following garden season. You want it cooler – likely down into the low 40s at least – high 30’s are likely better. Watering for sure as you don’t want the roots to dry out – drying roots are dead roots.

Easiest thing is to knock it out of the container once all the leaves have fallen off and the rose is fully dormant. Then plant it in the veg garden or spare spot so the bud union is a few inches below the surface. Prune the canes back to 12 inches. Next spring before it starts growing, dig it up and replant it in the pot. It will grow just fine this way. I “heel in” quite a few container grown perennial plants every fall and replant them the following spring. There’ll be a rose in that group this year as well.

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We recently purchased a property with 100' privet hedge that has been let go and is tall and gangly -- about 6 fet or more. I want it that tall but far denser. Is it too late to recover it? Can I slowly (or quickly) train it to be denser and tall?

A: Privet is a great little hedge and it responds to almost any kind of pruning. An acquaintance used to prune his with a lawn mower ever few years and couldn’t kill the darn thing as it would resprout from the base. The new hedge would be thicker than the old. :-) It’s a hard call without seeing the hedge to tell you to prune lightly or heavily – that’s mostly a judgement call. If it is really sparse and ugly, then I’d be tempted to whack it back hard. If it is sorta ugly in spots, then a partial knockback will easily (and quickly) thicken it up. A partial knockback would take 2-3 inches from the ends of the branches.

You might shape it up to where you want it to be. See what happens next summer if your shrubs have the strength and ability to thicken up to where you want them. If not, then knock back the offending plants that don’t do what you want to the ground and let them come back again. In three years, you’ll have your hedge the way you want it.

The thing you do have to do however is make this hedge stress free. You have to feed (can you say “compost”) heavily and water regularly.

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I have two questions. First is bugging me and I can't find the answer. You are my only hope. Can you use colored newspaper for mulch? I know you can't use glossy but I thought I heard the coloring in the non-glossy is toxic. I have been separating the black and white from any color, very tedious task. Must I be doing this?

Second, my husband let the fire pit get too high of junk before he burnt it. The tree beside it got toasted leaves on one half of it. Will it survive? It is an older tree, quite tall, a maple.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

A: The inks used in colour in newspapers are now soybean based inks and can be composted or used as a mulch with no difficulty or danger. The only problem you might have is with your plants all bending to the ground to watch the pictures of the garden section. So do cut this section up very thoroughly before putting it on the garden.

And about the husband. Why is it that guys tend to do this kind of thing? Long time readers will have read other stories of the “interesting” things husbands do in the garden from time to time. The bad news is your tree is a little toasty. The good news is that if the tree is healthy, it will throw new leaves next year (always assuming that the bark wasn’t burned) But he likely hasn’t killed it.

NEW CONTEST ALERT!
******************

OK – I’ve heard a lot of stories about husbands and their antics. I have an ebook here for every husband story I print in this newsletter. I’ll run a special edition in September for the best stories.

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Hi, I had my first red tomato a few days ago, too-just a baby cherry, but yummy! Once the garden goes on overload, one of my favorites is: Summer in a Saucepan (so named by my kids when they were little):

In a sauce pan, layer chopped tomatoes, then a bunch of fresh basil, then whatever summer squash is ready, sliced or chunked, then some more basil. I like garlic mixed in, but some of my family doesn't, so it depends on who's home for dinner...

Turn your burner on low & cook until everything is done-about 20 minutes or so. I just add salt & pepper, but my kids like butter, too. I'm new to your newsletter & am enjoying it lots.

Thanks,

Liz

A: Thanks Liz – you can bet I’ll try this one. I did up a garlic tomato recipe last night for a little bit of pasta. I’m going to turn red myself at this pace.

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I’m getting a LOT of questions right now about the little pods on your trumpet vines. Yes, they’re seeds. Yes, you can plant them – if you split the seedpod and toss the seeds inside around your garden.

Let them go brown on the vine for best results, the seeds in green pods are not ripe. The seeds inside the pod have to be brown to be ripe, not green or white.

If the pod is green, it may or may not ripen off the vine depending on the maturity of the pod. Don’t bet the farm on it.

And yes, you can just scatter the seed where you want more trumpetweeds… er. trumpet vines. Or you can ignore the pods and the vine will spread it around itself.

From My Garden To Yours

You know that sometimes gardening is about the little things. The other day I did a bit of work pruning and wound up scratching myself a bit. A touch of antiseptic did the health thing but then I tried an application of McBlooms hand cream. (www.mcblooms.com) Now I’m not a “hand cream” kind of guy as you probably know by now but this was great stuff. My hands did feel very much better and those of you who have been keeping gardener’s hand cream a secret should feel ashamed of yourselves. It makes me want to ask what other kinds of gardening stuff I don’t know about that you’re not telling me about.

I’m not usually found in those garden accessory shops (I’m the nut case wandering the aisles of specialist plant nurseries in the pouring rain) but I’m about to start haunting them if this is the kind of neat thing you can find.

Gardening is also about my bamboo stakes. Once again this year I constructed a tomato staking system worthy of mention in Architectural Digest magazine. It even drew positive reviews from some friends who are great gardeners and this crowd doesn’t give away praise easily to the likes of me – a mere reporter of the gardening scene. To make things even better, it holds up the tomatoes. Held together with binder twine, a product that should be second only to duct tape in the guy-universe, my design has helped me produce a bumper crop of plants in a very little space. Remember that if you have limited space, you’ll get more fruit from tomatoes if you stake them vertically rather than allow them to wander around the ground or put them in cages. File that away for next season.

I’ve written about this before but given that fish emulsion is a small thing and that we’ve still got quite a bit of gardening ahead of us this season, I want to focus your attention on the huge impact this product has on container plants. If your containers or hanging baskets are starting to look a little frazzled, this is the time to pour this magic elixir onto them in a big way. You won’t believe the difference after a week or two of treating your plants to fish and seaweed emulsion.

I gave the last application of this liquid gold onto my perennial garden last week to give them a little kick of growth. That will be the last liquid feeding the perennials get as I want to harden off for winter survival. I don’t want them actively growing in September and going into the fall frost season (darn, there’s that small word!) with lush new growth and tender roots. I want ‘em tough.

I simply love my little rose garden. I only grew one rose container this year and filled it with a ‘Knock-Out’ repeat blooming shrub rose. The only thing I did wrong was decide to grow a plant that was a heavy repeat bloomer instead of one that was heavily fragrant. You’d think I’d learn but as in all things this week, it’s the little mistakes that sometimes come back to get you as well. Mind you, this is an excellent little shrub rose and will look good next year somewhere. I’ll be planting and moving roses this fall after all the leaves fall off and they are truly dormant. They move well and survive moving in the fall quite nicely.

Do You Want to Grow Lavender?

The other little thing that I’m finding is quite useful in my small garden with its brand new soil and mulch and slug problem is a little spray bottle. I keep it by the back door filled with a combination of Tabasco sauce (2 ounces) and soap spray (insecticidal soap 1: 40 water) in a 16-ounce spray bottle. Not only do I wipe out little green worms on the roses, kill slugs eating the Hosta at 6:30 in the morning, but I also put a layer of protective anti-eat-me stuff on the leaves as well.

I’m not sure whether it’s the soap killing off the pests or the indigestion they get from the Tabasco sauce but once I started using this little concoction, I’ve had far fewer garden pests bothering my plants. Mind you, I only spray when I see a problem, as the soap by itself is a contact spray and won’t kill anything that it doesn’t hit.

I also had a fungal problem attack one Hosta. It covered the five leaf stalks with a 1/2 inch layer of hard fungal body. It was one of the little Hosta plants it attacked but one small dose of lime-sulphur and the fungus stopped growing immediately and then it slowly disintegrated and fell off. I’ve never seen anything like it in 25 years of gardening but it was toast once the organic fungicide hit it.

I told you a few columns ago about my new little Fiskars pruning shears and said I wanted the longer ones. Got ‘em! Now you should see me prune my perennial garden without having to bend over. I can hardly wait to prune some roses this fall. That long handle is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time. If you have back problems or have a reaching problem in the garden because of a disability, I can only suggest you find and experiment with this tool.

The little things have made this week so special in my garden. I hope you find a few of your own special things this week and share them with me. You can write me at my website www.simplegiftsfarm.com and I’ll share a few of your little things in upcoming columns.