Stevia sweetens a garden

Have you grown stevia? The University of Tennessee Gardens has named this plant, touted as a natural, no-calorie sweetener, as it Plant of the Month for September, and provided information on how to grow and use it.

UT Gardens kitchen garden manager Holly S. Jones submitted the article about Stevia rebaudiana, which is a tropical perennial native to the mountainous regions of Brazil and Paraguay. It has been used in South America and many regions for a long time, but was approved by the FDA as a “Generally Recognized as Safe” substance in the U.S. in 2008. It was only then that food manufacturers could begin adding it to their products, Jones says. Since then, it has become more common.

And yes, you can grow it in your own garden.

Tomatoes are ripe, but not ready

The tomatoes I grow ripen nicely and come off the plant easily, but when I cut them to use, the flesh is white and firm. Can you advise?

It’s certainly disappointing to cut into what appears to be a ripe tomato and find it still white or green inside. Garden experts suggest several possible causes, including nutrient deficiencies in the soil, insect damage, or even adverse weather conditions.

Leafrollers make a meal of cannas

My cannas were growing well and I thought should be about to bloom when I noticed that the leaves hadn’t opened, and they looked like they’d been stitched together! When I unrolled the leaves, I found a little grub and some other black substance. What is that? What can I do about it?

Your cannas have become host to a fairly common creature throughout the southeast called a canna leafroller, and it can do quite a bit of ugly damage to this summer-flowering favorite.

The grub you see when you unroll the leaves is the larval stage of a little brown moth.

Queen Anne’s Lace in an early-summer garden

I like to see Queen Anne’s Lace growing along the roadsides in summer. How can I get it to grow in my garden?

It’s not hard to get Queen Anne’s Lace started in a garden bed. In fact, the reason you see so much of it in open meadows along the side of the road is that it’s a prolific self-seeder.

After they bloom in late spring and early summer, the lacy clusters of white flowers fold up into a cup-shaped clump of seeds.

Cut flowers to bring summer indoors

With summer in full bloom, those daisies and black-eyed Susans, zinnias and sunflowers, coneflowers, dahlias and others make beautiful bouquets to enjoy indoors. To make those bouquets last longer, it’s best to start early.

“I definitely always cut before the heat of the day sets in,” says Tallahassee May, owner of Turnbull Creek Organic Farm in Bon Aqua, Tenn. “This is better than in the evening, when the flowers still seem to hold heat from the day, even after the sun has set.”

The secret to long-lasting bouquets from the garden, May says, is to keep things clean.

Keep zinnias free of powdery mildew

QUESTION: I love zinnias and plant them every year. Sometimes they do well and look great all summer, but many years the leaves are covered in powdery mildew. How do you get rid of this problem?

Powdery mildew is a fungus that appears as gray or white splotches on leaves, stems and flowers of zinnias and other ornamentals and some vegetable plants. It travels by airborne spores, and thrives when nights are moderately cool and foliage stays damp. A mild covering of powdery mildew is merely unattractive, but a severe case can cause distorted shoots and leaves, misshapen flowers, or can prevent flowering altogether.

Transplanting roses in the ‘wrong’ season

We are moving from one home to another this summer. We have a rose bush in our garden that was a gift for a special occasion that we planted about three years ago, and we’d like to take it with us. Is it possible to transplant a rose bush? It’s not very large, but it has a few blooms on it now.

The best times to transplant roses are in early spring or in the fall, but if, for whatever reason, mid-summer is when you have to do it, then give it the best care possible. Here is advice from Marty Reich, a consulting rosarian with the Nashville Rose Society and American Rose Society:

Move irises to a new home

I have irises that will need to be moved. They have been in a very shaded spot and have never bloomed for 4 years. I am moving to a new house and would like to transplant them. I know now is not the time to transplant, but should I trim the leaves back or leave the leaves?

Irises bloom best in full sun.

Now is not a bad time to move the irises. The experts at the American Iris Society and other sources suggest mid- to late-summer as the best time for digging, dividing and moving irises, but since yours haven’t bloomed in four years, they should be happy whenever you’re able to give them a new, sunnier spot in your new home’s landscape.

Here’s the method suggested by gardening experts: Cut the leaves in a fan shape about 6 inches tall, then lift the clump or rhizomes with a spading fork, wash off the dirt, and inspect the rhizome for soft spots, damage or disease.

Dig daffodils, save the bulbs

The daffodil bed needed thinning, so I dug them out after the leaves started turning yellow and replanted many of them in the same place. Now I have dozens of extra bulbs I can share with friends. Do they need to be planted right away?

When a daffodil bed begins to look crowded and you begin to see fewer flowers, it’s a sure sign that the bulbs need to be thinned out. One bulb becomes a clump of bulbs after a few years. The American Daffodil Society suggests digging and dividing daffodils about every 4 – 5 years.

The ADS notes that the time to do this job in many regions is now – after blooming ends and the foliage turns yellow. To save bulbs for later planting, wash them thoroughly and let them dry completely, at least a week, and put them in mesh bags, onion sacks or pantyhose and hang them in the coolest place you can find, a place with good air circulation to minimize storage rot.
Store them until the time is right to plant them in the fall.

To learn more about daffodils, visit the American Daffodil Society website, where you can also find links to regional daffodil societies in different parts of the country. In Nashville and Middle Tennessee (where The Garden Bench calls home), the Middle Tennessee Daffodil Society is the group for daffodil enthusiasts. MTDS will host the 2018 American Daffodil Convention and Show, April 5 – 8 in Franklin, TN. Visit the MTDS website here.

 

 

Care for peonies after they bloom

Now that the peonies have finished blooming, what’s the best thing to do with them – leave them or cut them back? Ours often get an ugly coating of powdery mildew on the leaves in the summer. Is there a way to prevent this?

After they bloom, peonies spend the rest of the summer gathering strength to bloom next year before they die back to the roots in winter. A good first task for the gardener is to cut off the faded flowers. Garden expert P. Allen Smith suggests removing the seed pods and lightly fertilizing in late spring or early summer. But be sure to leave the foliage. After the blooms are gone, the rich green leaves of peony shrubs remain an attractive feature in the garden – except when it develops a case of powdery mildew.