Plan your squirrel deterrents

We’re about to plant tomatoes again in our small garden, and it reminds me that last year the squirrels got most of the tomatoes before they had a chance to get ripe. Is there anything we can do to keep that from happening again?

This tomato might be tempting to a thirsty squirrel.

When you find that several of your green tomatoes has disappeared from the vine overnight, it’s a pretty good bet the squirrels have been at work. What’s even worse is finding half-eaten green tomatoes on the ground. I’ve had it happen, and I’m sure most other tomato gardeners have, as well.
Suggested deterrents range from blood meal or cayenne pepper sprinkled on the ground around the garden, to bird netting cages built to enclose the plants as they grow.
Some gardeners say that they leave a pan of water near the garden to provide the moisture the squirrels are looking for, hoping they’ll leave the tomatoes alone. Others hang aluminum pans and other shiny objects around the garden to scare the squirrels away. Those things may work for a little while, but squirrels are pretty clever and will realize quickly that they’re harmless, so it’s not a long-term solution. Last year, I draped a large inflatable snake over one of the cages, and that may have spooked them a bit; I moved the snake around every couple of days to try to keep them guessing.
Other ideas? Readers of The Garden Bench: If you’ve tried things that work to keep squirrels from grabbing the tomatoes, tell about them in the comments. They’re ideas worth sharing before tomato season arrives.
Garden events in Middle Tennessee
April 16: Perennial Plant Society of Middle Tennessee meets at Cheekwood. Refreshments at 6:30 p.m., program at 7 p.m. Speaker is Barbara Wise, author of Container Gardening For All Seasons, on “Planting Beautiful Containers and More.” The meeting is open to the public. www.ppsmt.org.
April 16: Orchid Society of Middle Tennessee meets at 7 p.m. at Cheekwood’s Botanic Hall. Speaker is Barry Jones, topic is “Compact to Miniature Orchids.” Learn more about the Orchid Society of Middle Tennessee at www.tnorchid.com.

April 20: Herb Society of Nashville Herb Sale: Herb favorites and hard-to-find varieties of annual and perennial herbs and plants for companion planting. New this year: a square-foot gardening display and handmade pottery markers by Roy Overcast. 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. at the Tennessee State Fairground Sports Arena Building. Free admission; $5 parking fee at the Fairgrounds. To learn more: www.herbsocietynashville.org.
April 20 – 21: The Skillery Grow Down: A weekend of gardening classes and workshops presented in partnership with Hands On Nashville’s Urban Agriculture Program. Events are held at HON’s Urban Farm in South Nashville and at various locations throughout Nashville. For a complete schedule, registration and fee details, visit www.TheSkillery.com.
April 27: First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville Herb & Craft Fair: Herb plants, native and heirloom tomato plants; handmade soaps, pressed-flower cards, garden calendars, jewelry; homemade sweet and yeast breads, spice mixes, gourmet vinegars, mustards, chutneys, jams, jellies and more. 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville, 1808 Woodmont Blvd. www.firstuunashville.org/herbfair for details.

The squash and the bees

I planted squash plants among my flowers. They look great and are blooming, but they’re not setting any squash. The blossom falls off before the squash begins to grow. Any help?

Squash grows after it has been pollinated by insects or by hand.

When squash plants bloom without producing squash, it probably means they need help with pollination. Squash plants produce male flowers at first, followed by female flowers a few days later. (You can tell the difference this way: male flowers have a single stamen in the center; female flowers have a four-part pistil, and appear swollen just beneath the blossom.)

According to information at GardenGuides.com, if the female flowers drop off without growing a squash, it means that it didn’t get pollinated by the bees or other pollinators that visit the garden.

Squash flowers are big, so if the bees aren’t doing an adequate job, you can do it yourself.  Use a cotton swab or a small, soft brush to gather the pollen from inside the male flower, and transfer it to the female flower. Or pick a male flower, remove the petals and swirl it around inside the female flower. (Look here for pictures of how this is done). With luck, a squash is born!

Hot news! The August Garden Calendar in Saturday’s Tennessean and at Tennessean.com.

Events

Aug. 4 (and every Saturday this month): Guided garden tours at Cheekwood, 11 a.m. – noon.Tours are free with Cheekwood admission, and no reservation is required. Garden Tours meet at Botanic Hall.

Aug. 5: The Nashville African Violet Club will meet at 1:45 at the Green Hill Women’s Center, 10905 Lebanon Road in Mt. Juliet. To learn more, contact Julie at Julie.mavity@gmail.com

Aug. 11: Celebrate the tomato at the annual Tomato Art Fest in East Nashville’s Five Points area, hosted by Art and Invention Gallery. Events include a Tomato 5K, a Fun Run, costumes, parades, games, art, entertainment, contests, competitions and more family fun. Look here to learn more.

Aug. 12: The Tennessee Gesneriad Society will meet at Cheekwood at the Frist Learning Center at 2 p.m. The program will be a pollinaton/hybridization workshop. For more info contact Julie at Julie.mavity@gmail.com (or 615-364-8459).

Aug. 16: Lunch and Lecture: New & Unique Plants for your Garden, noon – 1 p.m. at Cheekwood. Learn how to add color throughout the season and other helpful tips from Cheekwood’s garden staff. $15 for members, $25 for non-members (includes lunch). Call 615-353-9827 to register.

Aug. 21: Two meetings at Cheekwood’s Botanic Hall:

- The Perennial Plant Society meets at 6:30, beginning with refreshments and plant swap. Program begins at 7 p.m., and the speaker is Audubon naturalist Sherra Owens, presenting “Gardenening On The Wild Side With Nature’s Most Important Plant.”

- The Orchid Society of Middle Tennessee meets at 7 p.m. Michael Wenzel of the AtlanticBotanical Garden will speak on Phalaenopsis species.

Both meetings are open to the public.

Aug. 23: The Middle Tennessee Hosta Society meets at Cheekwood, 6:30 p.m., in the Potter Room. Guest speaker is landscape designer, photographer and writer Troy Marden; his topic: In a Southern Garden: Lessons from 20 Years of Gardening in the South.” To learn more about MTHS, visit http://www.mths-hosta.com.

Tomatoes out of control

QUESTION: I grow tomatoes every year, and in the past I have used cages – first the round ones commonly available at the big box stores, and later some of the square type. Even with the square ones the plants always overcome the cage. They get leggy and end up coming out of the cages on the sides and then bend over the wires. This year I tried staking the plants and did not use cages, but I encounter the same issues, the side growth spreads out and I have to tie them every which way. What am I doing wrong? — Wayne

Tomato plants quickly overwhelm flimsy wire cages.

Those flimsy wire cages – the round ones – must be some kind of joke. Anyone who grows tomatoes knows that they don’t do much to support a full-size plant. Even if the vine doesn’t grow out over the top, the weight of a bumper crop of ‘Better Boys’ will topple those supports. The square cages are a little better, but they still won’t contain all those wayward limbs.

If you want to use cages, the best bet is to build your own, using sturdy wire fencing (or some suggest panels of concrete mesh, which has openings large enough to reach your hand through). Using the cage in addition to a tall, sturdy stake should keep the tomatoes standing upright and within bounds a little better.

Still, if the tomatoes are indeterminate varieties – that is, they continue to form tomatoes throughout the growing season — it helps to do a little pruning. As the plant grows, it will develop “suckers” in the angles between the main stem and the side stems. You should pinch or snap or cut these suckers off to keep the plant from getting too bushy. As the tomato plant grows taller, tie the main stem loosely to the stake.

By the way, it’s best to install stakes and cages at planting time. It’s surprising how quickly a tomato plant can grow out of control. Keep that in mind for next year.

Events

June 2: Seeds of Hope self-guided garden tour. Six gardens in Belle Meade, Green Hills and Oak Hill, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Tickets $25; proceeds benefit Monroe Harding programs for children. www.monroeharding.org.

June 3: The Nashville African Violet Club meets at 1:45 at the Green Hill Women’s Center, 10905 Lebanon Road in Mt. Juliet. E-mail Julie.mavity@gmail.com to learn more.

June 9: The Robertson County Master Gardeners are hosting a garden tour of some of the most beautiful gardens in theSpringfield area. Visitors will see garden ponds, a greenhouse, garden sculptures, and woodland settings and some unique plants in these private gardens. Hours are10 a.m. – 2 p.m.; tickets are $5 per person, $8 per couple and will be available on the day of the tour on the pavilion of the UT Extension Office on the square inSpringfield, and at the Potting Shed in Greenbrier.

June 9: Plan a road trip to Rugby, Tenn., for an all-day event at Historic Rugby Cumberland Plateau Gardens. The day begins at 9 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) with “Rugby Landscape Gardening From 1880 to 2012” by Rick Murphy, followed by  “Garden Design Sun to Shade” a workshop by Bob Washburn of Wolf River Valley Growers. Lunch, garden tours and a British Cream Tea round out the schedule. The cost is $40, and advance reservations are required. Proceeds benefit Historic Rugby. Information, 888-214-3400.

June 10: The Tennessee Gesneriad Society meets in Cheekwood’s Botanic Hall at2 p.m. Program is a Mini Show. Contact Julie at 615-364-8459 to learn more.

June 15 – 16: The American Hosta Society is convening in Nashville this year, and the public is invited to visited the National Hosta Show at the Nashville Airport Marriott Friday, June 15,2  – 5:30 p.m., and Saturday June 16,9 a.m. –noon. Vendor areas will be open during those times, as well. This is expected to be one of the largest hosta shows in recent history with more than 800 entries expected. Visitors to the show will have the opportunity to see a wide range of sizes and colors of hostas, displayed as single leaves, hostas not yet on the market, hostas grown in containers, and hostas used in artistic designs. Read more about the convention here.

Garden seeds: How old is too old?

QUESTION: How long do seeds last? If a seed packet says “purchase by 12/11,” would the seeds still be good for this year?  I’m looking at sunflowers, green beans, and other summer vegetables.

Packed for 2011. Still good? Probably, if they’ve been kept dry and cool.

It’s probably a common experience among gardeners to find packets of last year’s seeds – or seeds from two or more years ago (opened or unopened) stashed in a forgotten corner. They look too good to throw away, but is it worth wasting time and space in the garden to plant them if they may not germinate?

The good news is that many seeds last beyond the “sell-by” or “packaged for” date that’s printed on the packet, especially if they’ve been kept in favorable conditions – dry and reasonably cool. Seeds of parsnips, onions and leeks are among those that will only be good for a year, but seeds of most of the common garden vegetables can last two, three, or some, even five years. Here’s a short list from vegetable researchers atOregonStateUniversity:

Two years: sweet corn, lettuce, parsley, peppers, chard.

Three years: Bush and pole beans, carrots, cucumbers, melons, peas, squashes, tomatoes.

Four years: radishes, turnips.

Seeds of annual flowers are generally good for 1 – 3 years, the researchers say; seeds of perennials can last 2 – 4 years.

You can test the viability of a packet of seeds by placing a few in a moist paper towel in a warm room for a few days to see if they germinate. Seed Savers Exchange provides detailed instructions here.

If you have seeds left at the end of the season, the best way to store them is in a sealed jar with something to absorb moisture (rice or powdered milk are two suggestions). Store the jar in the refrigerator or a cool area in the house, such as a basement.

Garden events

The Mid-South Chapter of the Lupus Foundation’s Down the Garden Path garden tour and plant sale May 19 and 20. Visit nine gardens in Belle Meade, Green Hills and Franklin. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.Saturday, noon– 6 p.m.Sunday. Tickets are $20 prior to the event, $25 on tour days, and proceeds benefit the Lupus Foundation of America, Mid-South chapter. www.lupusmidsouth.org.

Coming in June

Seeds of Hope self-guided garden tour, June 2. Six gardens in Belle Meade, Green Hills and Oak Hill, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Tickets $25; proceeds benefit Monroe Harding programs for children. www.monroeharding.org.

The Nashville African Violet Club meets June 3 at 1:45 at the Green Hill Women’s Center, 10905 Lebanon Road in Mt. Juliet. E-mail Julie.mavity@gmail.com to learn more.

Gardens in Rugby, Tenn. will be open to visitors on June 9.

Plan a road trip on June 9 to Rugby, Tenn., for an all-day event at Historic Rugby Cumberland Plateau Gardens. The day begins at 9 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) with “Rugby Landscape Gardening From 1880 to 2012” by Rick Murphy, followed by  “Garden Design Sun to Shade” a workshop by Bob Washburn of Wolf River Valley Growers. Lunch, garden tours and a British Cream Tea round out the schedule. The cost is $40, and advance reservations are required. Proceeds benefit Historic Rugby. Information, 888-214-3400.

The Tennessee Gesneriad Society meets June 10 in Cheekwood’s Botanic Hall at2 p.m. Program is a Mini Show. Contact Julie at 615-364-8459 to learn more.

Perennial Plant Society monthly meeting at Cheekwood, June 19,7 p.m. in Botanic Hall. June meeting is potluck dinner and photos of members’ gardens.

Mulching trees; and a stack of new books

QUESTION: How should mulch be put around trees — piled high or spread even with the ground and good edging to keep water within?

Unfortunately, this is not the best way to mulch trees.

There are many good reasons to use mulch around trees in a landscape. It keeps the soil warmer in winter and cooler in summer; it helps the soil retain moisture; it helps control weeds, and improves soil fertility by adding organic matter. It keeps mowers and string trimmers at a safe distance from the tree trunk, plus, it looks nice.

There are a few “rules” for proper mulching, but none of them include piling mulch up high around the trunks of trees. In fact, it’s a bad idea. Here’s why:

Plants need oxygen in the soil, and mulch that is too thick – more than 4 inches – restricts the soil oxygen exchange, according to the UT Extension’s publication on mulching trees and shrubs. Roots will grow up to find more oxygen, instead of down and outward through the soil. Too much mulch also causes too much moisture in the root zone, making roots susceptible to rot, insects and diseases. Cracking in the bark creates an entry point for insects and fungal growth, and invites rodents to chew the bark and damage the trunk or even girdle the tree – destroying the bark all the way around, which is a quick cause of a tree’s demise.

Unfortunately, this so-called “volcano” mulching, with the mulch placed in a cone around and next to the trunk, is a common practice. Here’s the proper way to place mulch, according to UT Extension (and other good sources):

Apply mulch in a ring no more than 2 to 4 inches deep, at least 4 to 6 feet in diameter around the base of the tree. Place it so that it tapers out to the ground level at the edge of the ring. Do not pile the mulch around the trunk; pull it several inches away so that the base of the trunk is exposed and air moves freely.

Spring reading

There are several new gardening books out this spring. Here’s a roundup:

* I’m slowly making my way through Women and Their Gardens: A History from the Elizabethan Era to Today, by Catherine Horwood (published by Ball Publishing, an imprint of Chicago Review Press). Focusing on the fact of history that women have often been excluded from the serious study of plants, Horwood brings these women into their rightful place in the horticultural spotlight. At more than 400 pages, there is much to be discovered about these pioneering women. I have just learned, for instance, that in 1897, Beatrix Potter was snubbed in her attempt to present research on spore germination of a rare form of fungi. She went back to private research and to her other specialty, detailed watercolor illustrations. A hundred years later, the artist famous for her beautiful childrens’ book illustrations was honored by the Linnean Society with a distinguished lecture entitled “Beatrix Potter as Mycologist.” So there.

* You may remember Graham Kerr as a cookbook author, TV personality and chef who called himself The Galloping Gourmet. His new book is Growing At the Speed of Life: A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden (published by Perigee Trade Paperbacks). He acknowledges from the first page – from the cover, really – “As the Galloping Gourmet, I cooked just about everything that grows – but I’d never grown a thing I’d cooked.” He set out to change that, and the book outlines much of what he learned in that year, and what he expects to learn about growing food in the years ahead. It’s a charmingly personal account, and with a shout-out to “First Lady Michelle Obama putting spade to turf on the White House lawn.” His focus is on the basics, the favorite vegetables and most-used herbs, and with recipes, of course.

* Local gardener and garden blogger Barbara Wise, author of Container Gardening For All Seasons (published by Cool Springs Press) makes assembling gorgeous containers easy by providing, cookbook-style, “recipes” and shopping lists and assembly instructions for about 100 container combinations. (My thanks to Barbara, because I heard about the book just as I was compiling information on container planting for the “Grow a Green Thumb” class I’m leading right now for Lipscomb University’s Lifelong Learning series. What a great resource!)

* For the more ambitious gardeners who include fruit-growing in their garden and landscape plans, there is Grow Fruit Naturally: A Hands-On Guide to Luscious, Homegrown Fruit, by Lee Reich. In my semi-sunny garden, strawberries (apparently, to feed the rabbits) and blueberries (for the birds) are about as far as I’m willing to venture into fruit-growing territory, but if you’re serious about getting fruit from tree to table, this book is for you. It helps you plan, choose and maintain plants in the garden or in containers, and learn ways to control (or avoid) common pests and diseases without toxic sprays. I did just buy a ‘Meyer’ lemon shrub to add to our container collection of things that need to be pampered, so maybe this will help us keep it alive. The eye-candy photos make leafing through the book a pleasant distraction. It’s published by Taunton Press.

* Speaking of nice photos, Rodale Books has published The Photographic Garden: Mastering the Art of Digital Garden Photography, by Matthew Benson, a professional photographer and contributing editor to Organic Gardening magazine. Since part of the joy of gardening is taking pictures of what you grow and sharing them with other gardeners, it would be lovely to know how to do it beautifully. Read the book before the next time you take your camera out, and maybe your garden photos will jump to the next level right away.

* Finally, in the stack of new books: Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg Way: 18^th Century Methods for Today’s Organic Gardeners by Wesley Green (also published by Rodale). Do you grow salsify? Have you ever heard of skirret? These may not be at the top of everyone’s list of favorite vegetables, but in the 18^th Century they were likely growing alongside the onions, garlic, melons, chives, sweet potatoes, beets, parsley and many other things that are familiar in our gardens, and they grow now at Colonial Williamsburg, one of the nation’s best historical preservation sites. The focus in this book is the traditional cultivation methods that are still good for today’s organic gardens. Green, the author, founded the Colonial Garden and Plant Nursery in the Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg and he and another gardener, Don McKelvey, study and interpret 18^th-Century plants, tools and techniques. This book is the beautiful record of that impressive work.

Events coming up

Garden author Barbara Wise (see above, with her new book Container Gardening For All Seasons) will be at Freeman Flowers in the Westhaven Town Center on April 26, 4 – 6 p.m. Barbara will show how to plant several container “recipes,” and will answer container-scaping questions. Light refreshments will be served.

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The Herb Society of Nashville’s annual plant sale is April 21 at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. It’s 9 a.m. – 2 p.m., but get there early to browse through 15,000 herbs (including some of those hard-to-find varieties) and talk to the Answer Ladies and all the other herb fanciers who turn out for this annual event. Look for more info at the Society’s website, www.herbsocietynashville.org and Facebook page.

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Cheekwood is celebrating its gardens all through April with a series of Cheekwood in Bloom events.

The grand opening of the Howe Garden at Cheekwood (after a million-dollar renovation) will be April 21, with activities, live music, guided tours and refreshments,10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

In honor of national Arbor Day, April 28, there will be several drop-in activities and demonstrations. By the way, Cheekwood is now a certified Level IV arboretum, with more than 120 identified species of trees.

Every Sunday in April there will be guided greenhouse tours atnoon; guided museum tours at1 p.m.; and a drawing room concert series featuring Blair School of Music at 2 p.m.

Complete details on Cheekwood in Bloom are at Cheekwood’s web site.

* Coming in May: The Robertson County Master Gardeners annual plant sale is planned for May 12, 8:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. It will be held at the UT Extension office pavilion on the square in Springfield.

Sweet surprise: sweet potato vines

QUESTION: The ornamental sweet potato vines I grew in large pots last summer produced potatoes – to my surprise! Can they be replanted to produce vines next year?

Sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) ‘Blackie’

Yes! The sweet potatoes that are grown for their ornamental vines don’t have much taste, but U.T. Extension agent David Cook says you can save the tubers to produce the same foliage next year. Here’s how to do it:

If the potatoes haven’t already frozen (and by now, you may find that they have, unfortunately), dig them up and store them packed in straw in a dry, cool place. When the weather begins to get warm again, the tubers may begin to sprout. Cut them into sections just as you would cut a seed potato, with at last one “eye” per section. Allow them to dry for a few days, and plant them in the ground after the frost date has passed (mid-April here in Middle Tennessee).

Ornamental sweet potato vines come in a variety of fancy-leafed “flavors.” ‘Blackie’ is an easy-to-find favorite, with purplish-black, deeply lobed leaves. ‘Ace of spades’ has heart-shaped leaves. ‘Tri-color’ is variegated with green, white and pink foliage, and the variety called ‘Marguerite’ has golden-green leaves.

The vines grow fast, and are a striking addition as a “spiller” in a container, draping elegantly over the sides. I learned last summer that rabbits find the leaves tasty. If your garden has a resident rabbit (as mine does), you’ll find the vines will start to disappear, so be warned.

Don’t worry about the daffodils

It’s only January, and the daffodils in my yard are already coming up! How do I keep them from freezing?

Early risers: daffodils can survive winter.

It may seem too early for this unmistakable sign of spring, but it’s not unusual for the shoots of early daffodils to begin pushing up through the ground. In some places, they started coming up before Christmas. The best thing to do is: Nothing. In fact, there is nothing you can do. Spread some pine straw over the daffodil bed if it makes you feel better, but really, even that is an unnecessary step, says Anne Owen of the Middle Tennessee Daffodil Society.

We’re at the mercy of the weather fluctuations, but generally, a blast of cold weather won’t hurt the daffodils, Owen says. The worst that could happen is that the weather turns warm and stays warm enough for long enough that the daffodils bloom; then the flowers might succumb to a snap of extreme cold. If we get a freeze while only the leaves are up, they should survive without a problem.

Good reading

It’s a good time to sit down with a stack of seed catalogs (or a list of seed company URLs) and plan this year’s kitchen garden. Here are some of my favorites (where I indulge in a little wishful thinking):

Seed Savers’ Exchange (Unusual varieties not found at the big box store seed kiosks)

Seeds of Change (Seeds, supplies, and live plants, too)

Territorial Seed Company (Try out the online garden planner)

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (“Particularly suited to the Mid-Atlantic and similar regions”)

Renee’s Garden (Pretty as a cottage garden)

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (Recipes included!)

John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds (Straightforward, with tidy line drawings; more tips and entertaining reading at the website)

Brent & Becky’s Bulbs (One of the best sources for bulbs, say those in the know)

Burpee (for sheer volume, and all those luscious pictures!)

Making plans for a great year in the garden

QUESTION: What are YOUR garden goals for 2012? Here are mine:

-Grow more flowers. In my yard, that means finding more flowers that thrive in the semi-shade that’s provided by the graceful maples and the giant, beautiful elm tree in our back yard.

-Keep trying for better success with tomatoes. That means figuring out how to outsmart squirrels. (Maybe I should give up on tomatoes in the kitchen garden out back and move tomato production to my garden plot at Farm in the City, the community garden I belong to downtown.)

-Double the produce by doubling the space for growing. I’d like to take on another raised bed at Farm in the City if there’s one available.

-Grow better peppers. I know that the secret is lots of sun and consistent water. There’s a lot of sun at Farm in the City; I need to work on the water part.

-Okra: plant less, pick more often.

-Grow more pole beans. Grow more cucumbers. Try squash again.

-Plant more shade-tolerant herbs. This is a project I started last spring – finding herbs that can grow happily in the shadiest of the eight raised beds in the kitchen garden out back. Success so far with curly parsley and red-veined sorrel. Hope to plant sweet woodruff and more borage, maybe nasturtium. Still trying to find lovage.

-Make peace with the wildlife in the backyard, while at the same time finding a way to keep the rabbits from eating the hostas.

-Plant more big, blooming perennials and annuals in the three little garden beds at Mom’s house.

-Visit as many public gardens as I can manage (especially interested in visiting Eudora Welty’s home and garden in Jackson, Miss. this spring).

-Enjoy every minute I can spend gardening, and writing, talking and teaching about gardening.

What plans do you have for your garden this year?

What else can go wrong with tomatoes?

QUESTION: My tomato plants are tall and full, and they have been blooming a lot but the blooms disappear. The flower usually dries up and falls off. Otherwise, they look  healthy. Can you tell me what’s wrong with them? – D.S.

When the weather is hot, tomato blossoms fall.

Two things could be causing tomato flowers to fall off: extreme heat and dry soil. When temperatures get above 90 degrees for several days – and we’ve had a lot of those days recently – tomato blossoms tend to drop off without setting fruit. Blossoms also drop off if the plants don’t get enough water. When the heat wave passes and if we finally get rain, you’ll probably see the tomatoes begin to bloom and set fruit again.

QUESTION: Some of my tomatoes look ripe but when I go to pick them they still have green patches that don’t ripen. – J.H.

I found information that suggests that the green patches on ripe tomatoes may be due to the tomatoes being on the interior of dense plants with heavy foliage. It’s a condition called “blotchy ripening.”

At the same Web site, which is CornellUniversity’s Vegetable MD Online, there are pictures of  tomatoes with catface, cracks, russeting, zippering and other common disorders. If you want to see just about anything that can go wrong in a tomato patch, find it here.

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Cooler weather is coming soon, inviting you to get back out to the garden. Look for the September Landscape & Garden Calendar Saturday in The Tennessean.

Seed saving at the end of summer

What is the best way to keep some of my garlic and seeds from the sunflowers to plant next year?  How do I store them? Do black eyed peas and green beans save well for next year? Seeds from bell peppers? I’ve never saved seeds before, so this is all new to me. – Anne-Marie

You know you’re a real gardener when you start thinking about saving seeds for next year. Congratulations! In most cases, seed-saving is ridiculously easy. Here are some guidelines:

Harvest sunflower seeds when the heads droop and the petals drop.

For garlic, if you’ve harvested and cured the bulbs properly, all you need to do is set some aside to plant this fall. Keep a few heads of garlic in a dry, cool place, and when the time comes (late September to mid-October is a good time to shoot for), break them apart and plant individual cloves in a prepared bed. They’ll get a good start in the ground this fall, and be ready to harvest early next
summer.

Sunflowers are also easy to harvest. When the back of the flower’s head turns yellow, cover it with a paper bag. This will keep the birds and squirrels from harvesting before you do, and as the seeds fall naturally, they will drop into the bag. You can also cut the flower off with about a foot of stem and hang the flower head upside-down in a paper bag in a warm, dry place. Shake the flower head every now and then to let the seeds fall into the bag. The important thing here is to keep things dry so the seeds don’t get moldy, and a paper bag allows the air to circulate. After they are completely dry, a canning jar makes a good seed-storage container.

Peas and beans can be left on the plant until they are dry, then harvested. Make sure they are
absolutely dry (I’ve dried them on a window screen “shelf” in the attic), then open them by hand and store the seeds in a jar. If frost threatens before you harvest, pull up the whole plant by the roots and hang it upside down in a dry place until the pods are dry.

For peppers, cut the bottom off a fully mature pepper and strip the seeds out of the center. Spread them to dry on a paper towel and allow them to dry in a cool location until the seeds are dry enough to break when folded.

You didn’t ask about saving seeds of tomatoes, but a lot of people do, so I’ll include it here. This is  one of the more labor intensive processes. Select a tomato that is completely ripe. Cut it in half crosswise, and squeeze out the jelly-like substance the holds the seeds. Place this into a small jar and add a little water, cover the jar loosely and place it in a warm location for about three days, stirring it once a day.

You’ll notice that a layer of fungus begins to form on the top of the mixture after a couple of days. This is a good sign, because the fungus eats away the gelatinous coat and produces substances that help control some diseases. After three days, fill the jar with warm water and let the contents settle, then begin pouring out the water, tomato pulp and immature seeds, which will have floated to the top (the good, viable seeds will settle at the bottom of the jar). Repeat the process until the water is almost clear and the bottom of the jar is lined with clean seeds, then strain the water off these seeds and spread them out onto paper towels or newspaper. Allow the seeds to dry completely before you store them.

After you’ve harvested, dried and packaged the seeds, be sure to label them carefully so you’ll know next year what you have.

The International Seed-Saving Institute (where I found most of this information) has a straightforward, non-flashy but excellent Web site that walks you through the process of saving seeds of the most common vegetables. Check it out at www.seedsave.org.

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Look in today’s Tennessean and at Tennessean.com to find suggestions for shrubs to use beside a front porch.

Click over to Turning Toward the Sun: A Garden Journal for an update on the rabbit situation.