by Matt Lollar | Mar 4, 2021
Plant with Purpose: Written by Rachel Mathes
Last spring, we were all ready to host another Open House and Plant Sale on Mother’s Day weekend. When the realities of the pandemic became clear, we canceled the event for the safety of everyone involved. We typically have more than 500 visitors and dozens of volunteers on site. This year we are happy to announce we have adapted our annual fundraiser to a monthly learning and growing opportunity for the whole community.
Master Gardener Volunteer Jeanne Breland is growing native milkweed in her monarch exclusion fortress for a Plant with Purpose talk and sale in the spring. Previous years’ milkweed have been eaten by monarch caterpillars before the sale so Jeanne has built her fortress to get the best results. Photo by Rachel Mathes
Our Master Gardener Volunteers will be teaching Thursday evening classes on particular plant groups throughout the year in our new series: Plant with Purpose. Topics will range from milkweed to shade plants to vegetables and herbs for different seasons. Attendees can attend the talks for free and grow along with us with the purchase of a box. These boxes are modeled after community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes you can purchase from local farms. Buyers will get a variety of the plants discussed in the plant lesson that week. For example, in our first event, Growing a Pizza Garden, we will have two tomato plants, two pepper plants, and one basil plant available for $20. Throughout the year, prices and number of plants will vary depending on the topic.
We hope with this new model of presentations and plant sales will enable us to remain Covid-safe while still bringing horticulture education to the community. Classes will be held on Thursday evenings from 6-7 pm via Zoom. Register on our Eventbrite to get the Zoom link emailed to you before each talk. Plant pick up will be the following Saturday from 10 am to noon. Master Gardener Volunteers will load up your plant box in a contact-free drive thru at the UF/IFAS Leon County Extension Office at 615 Paul Russell Rd.
Propagation of angel wing begonia and other plants by Joan Peloso, Master Gardener Volunteer.
Master Gardener Volunteers are already growing plants for you to purchase throughout the year. Landscape plants, herbs, vegetables, shrubs and even trees will be available later in the year. Funds raised from this series help fund our Horticulture programming. Some notable programs that will benefit from Plant with Purpose include our Demonstration Garden, 4-H Horticulture Club, the Veterans’ Garden Group at the VA Tallahassee Outpatient Clinic, and various school gardens we help support throughout Leon County.
In the last year, we have adapted many of our programs to meet virtually, and even created new ones like our Wednesday Webinar series where we explore different horticulture topics twice a month with guest speakers from around the Panhandle. While we still can’t meet in person to get down in the dirt with all of our community programs, we hope that the Plant with Purpose series will help fill the hole left by our cancelled Open House and Plant Sale. Join us for the first installment of Plant with Purpose on Thursday March 18th from 6-7pm. Pick up for purchased plant boxes will be Saturday March 20th from 10am-noon.
To register for this event and other events at the Leon County Extension Office, please visit the Leon County Extension Office Events Registration Page.
by Matthew Orwat | Feb 25, 2021
Tomatoes ripening on the vine – Image Credit Matthew Orwat UF/IFAS Extension
It is late-February, so the spring growing season is just around the corner. Now is the time to be thinking about which tasty tomatoes you want to plant in your home garden! Although tomatoes are a favorite kitchen staple, they prove challenging to grow in the Florida Panhandle climate.
While many tomato diseases can kill plants, damage fruit, and reduce yields, genetic resistance or tolerance to select diseases exist. The following are three of the most common diseases and viruses home gardeners face, for which resistant and tolerant varieties exist.
Tomato spotted wilt affects tomatoes, and numerous other vegetables, ornamentals, field crops and weeds. The disease can cause significant yield losses of tomato. Image Credit UF/IFAS Plant Pathology UScout Site
Tomato Spotted Wilt (TSW) is a viral disease which is transmitted by thrips, a species of insect that is very small and not always visible when checking the garden for insect pests. They love to feed on the sugary juices of the tomato flowers, and while feeding, they have the opportunity to transmit the virus through their piercing and sucking mouth parts. Lots of different symptoms may occur with TSW. Initially growers will notice light or dark brown spots on leaves of affected tomatoes, next wilting or stunting will occur, along with brown or purple streaks on the stems. Finally, fruit will exhibit unsightly brown rings throughout. The good news is that home gardeners can get a head start on this disease by planting resistant cultivars. When shopping for seed or transplants, growers should look for plants listed with the codes TSW or TSWV, because these have demonstrated resistance to Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus.
Another viral disease often found in the tomato garden is Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl (TYLC) Virus. TYLC first appeared in Miami in 1997 and was brought to Florida by infected whiteflies. Much like TSW, TYLC is spread from plant to plant by feeding whiteflies. As the name indicates, TYLC symptoms include curled leaves and stunted growth. Infected plants produce little to no fruit. Strategies to reduce the possibility of virus transmission to the garden include reducing the population of weedy plants, which may harbor whiteflies. Fortunately, resistant cultivars are available in plant catalogs, and are denoted by TYLC to indicate resistance.
Spread of TYLC is by the feeding of TYLCV infected adult whiteflies. Mechanical or seed transmission is not known to occur. Upward curling and yellowing of the leaves is an early symptom. Credit: UF/IFAS Plant Pathology UScout Site
Blighting of leaves and wilting of part or entire plant can expose fruits to sunscalding thereby further affecting yield of affected plants in production. Credit: UF/IFAS Plant Pathology UScout Site
Fusarium Wilt is one of the oldest diseases to affect tomatoes in the state of Florida and is caused by the fungal pathogen Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici races 1, 2, or 3. This pathogen is often present in regional soils and moved by wind. Once it enters the roots of tomato plants, fusarium wilt proliferates and clogs the vascular system, much like a clog in the plumbing of a building. Thus, the primary symptom is the wilting of the plant, which will first be noticeable on hot days, despite adequate irritation. Once infected, there is no cure, and infected plants should be removed and destroyed to stop the spread. The good news is that resistant cultivars are available to the various fusarium races. They are usually denoted as F-R 1, 2, or 3 in seed catalogs. Additionally, look for plants labeled VFN. These cultivars are resistant to a different kind of wilt, called verticillium, as well as fusarium and nematodes.
Fortunately, the UF / IFAS publication “Tomato Varieties for Florida—Florida “Red Rounds,” Plums, Cherries, Grapes, and Heirlooms” by Monica Ozores-Hampton and Gene McAvoy has provided us with a handy chart of tomato varieties with disease resistance. Codes in the columns indicate disease resistance to specific pathogens. While there is no single tomato variety resistant to all possible disease pathogens, planting different varieties with several different types of resistance will allow growers to hedge against attack by a number of potential disease problems. Some of the more common disease resistant tomato varieties planted in this area are ‘Quincy’, ‘Bella Rosa’, ‘Amelia’, ‘Tasti-Lee’, ‘BHN 602’, and ‘Volante’.
For a further look at the various diseases of tomato, the EDIS publication “A Series on Diseases in the Florida Vegetable Garden: TOMATO” offers more detail. Another resource UF/IFAS offers for disease diagnosis is the NFREC U-Scout website. U-Scout provides information on more than 40 potential disease issues in tomato. Additionally, any plant disease can be diagnosed through your County Extension Office or by submitting samples to the Plant Pathology Clinic, at the North Florida Research and Education Center, for only $30/sample for basic services.
by Daniel J. Leonard | Sep 28, 2020
2020 has not been the most pleasant year in many ways. However, one positive experience I’ve had in my raised bed vegetable garden has been the use of a cover crop, Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum)! Use of cover crops, a catch-all term for many species of plants used to “cover” field soil during fallow periods, became popular in agriculture over the last century as a method to protect and build soil in response to the massive wind erosion and cropland degradation event of the 1930s, the Dust Bowl. While wind erosion isn’t a big issue in raised bed gardens, cover crops, like Buckwheat, offer many other services to gardeners:
Buckwheat in flower behind summer squash. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
- Covers, like Buckwheat, provide valuable weed control by shading out the competition. Even after termination (the cutting down or otherwise killing of the cover crop plants and letting them decompose back into the soil as a mulch), Buckwheat continues to keep weeds away, like pinestraw in your landscape.
- Cover crops also build soil. This summer, I noticed that my raised beds didn’t “sink” as much as normal. In fact, I actually gained a little nutrient-rich organic matter! By having the Buckwheat shade the soil and then compost back into it, I mostly avoided the phenomena that causes soils high in organic matter, particularly ones exposed to the sun, to disappear over time due to breakdown by microorganisms.
- Many cover crops are awesome attractors of pollinators and beneficial insects. At any given time while my Buckwheat cover was flowering, I could spot several wasp species, various bees, flies, moths, true bugs, and even a butterfly or two hovering around the tiny white flowers sipping nectar.
- Covers are a lot prettier than bare soil and weeds! Where I would normally just have either exposed black compost or a healthy weed population to gaze upon, Buckwheat provided a quick bright green color blast that then became covered with non-stop white flowers. I’ll take that over bare soil any day.
Buckwheat cover before termination (left) and after (right) interplanted with Eggplant. Photo courtesy Daniel Leonard, UF/IFAS Calhoun County Extension.
Now that I’ve convinced you of Buckwheat’s raised bed cover crop merits, let’s talk technical and learn how and when to grow it. Buckwheat seed is easily found and can be bought in nearly any quantity. I bought a one-pound bag online from Johnny’s Selected Seeds for my raised beds, but you can also purchase larger sizes up to 50 lb bags if you have a large area to cover. Buckwheat seed germinates quickly as soon as nights are warmer than 50 degrees F and can be cropped continuously until frost strikes in the fall. A general seeding rate of 2 or 3 lbs/1000 square feet (enough to cover about thirty 4’x8’ raised beds, it goes a long way!) will generate a thick cover. Simply extrapolate this out to 50-80 lbs/acre for larger garden sites. I scattered seeds over the top of my beds at the above rate and covered lightly with garden soil and obtained good results. Unlike other cover crops (I’m looking at you Crimson Clover) Buckwheat is very tolerant of imperfect planting depths. If you plant a little deep, it will generally still come up. A bonus, no additional fertilizer is required to grow a Buckwheat cover in the garden, the leftover nutrients from the previous vegetable crop will normally be sufficient!
Buckwheat “mulch” after termination. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard, UF/IFAS Calhoun County Extension.
Past the usual cover crop benefits, the thing that makes Buckwheat stand out among its peers as a garden cover is its extremely rapid growth and short life span. From seed sowing to termination, a Buckwheat cover is only in the garden for 4-8 weeks, depending on what you want to use it for. After four weeks, you’ll have a quick, thick cover and subsequent mulch once terminated. After eight weeks or so, you’ll realize the plant’s full flowering and beneficial/pollinator insect attracting potential. This lends great flexibility as to when it can be planted. Have your winter greens quit on you but you’re not quite ready to set out tomatoes? Plant a quick Buckwheat cover! Yellow squash wilting in the heat of summer but it’s not quite time yet for the fall garden? Plant a Buckwheat cover and tend it the rest of the summer! Followed spacing guidelines and only planted three Eggplant transplants in a 4’x8’ raised bed and have lots of open space for weeds to grow until the Eggplant fills in? Plant a Buckwheat cover and terminate before it begins to compete with the Eggplant!
If a soil building, weed suppressing, beneficial insect attracting, gorgeous cover crop for those fallow garden spots sounds like something you might like, plant a little Buckwheat! For more information on Buckwheat, cover crops, or any other gardening topic, contact your local UF/IFAS County Extension Office. Happy Gardening!
by Matt Lollar | Aug 24, 2020
A common question for gardeners at the end of the season is if one should till the soil or use no till practices. Opinions vary regarding this question, even among Extension Agents. However old crops harbor insects, both good and bad. This phenomenon was noticed on some recently cut back tomato plants. The intention was to cut the leftover spring garden tomatoes back to encourage fall production. Instead, a host plant for mealybugs was provided.
Mealybugs on a tomato plant. Photo Credit: Matt Lollar, University of Florida/IFAS Extension – Santa Rosa County
Mealybugs are soft-bodied insects that possess a covering of flocculent, white, waxy filaments. They are about 1/8 inch in length and usually pinkish or yellowish in color. Mealybugs have piercing-sucking mouthparts which they use to siphon fluids from the leaves, stems, and sometimes roots of many ornamental and vegetable plants. Mealybug damage produces discolored, wilted, and deformed leaves.
One very common example of an insect pest likely to claim residence in your garden’s crop residue, are squash bugs. They like to overwinter on squash, cucumber, and other cucurbit crop residue. If you choose to not till your garden and leave a portion of last seasons crop in your garden, then you should consider applying an insecticide to your spent crop at the end of the season. A product containing a pyrethrin or pyrethroid as an active ingredient would be a good broad spectrum insecticide to control any pest that may reside on plant residue. More information on pyrethrins and pyrehtroids can be found at the EPA webpage: Pyrethrins and Pyrethroids. If you choose to apply an insecticide, it is important that you follow the information on the label regarding pollinator protection. Another option is to plant a trap crop on the edge of your garden to help attract pest insects away from your desired crops. More information on trap crops can be found in the EDIS Publication: Intercropping, Pest Management and Crop Diversity.
An adult squash bug on a zucchini leaf. Photo Credit: Matt Lollar, University of Florida/IFAS Extension – Santa Rosa County
So the answer to the till or no till question is…it depends. It is really up to the gardener. Yes, the residue from crops will add nutrients and organic matter to your soil, but it could also increase pest pressure in your garden. If you don’t plan to remove crop residue and don’t plan to till, then keep an eye out for what could be hiding in your garden.
by Daniel J. Leonard | Aug 24, 2020
August is awful. Its heat makes one miss the relative cool of July. Its rain is so sporadic that it invokes nostalgia for the rainy afternoons of early summer. But if there is a silver lining in August for gardeners, it is the simplicity that it brings. The weaker spring crops, tomatoes, squash and the rest, are all gone now, destroyed or rendered fruitless by insects, disease, and heat. This leaves only the hardened, usually pest and disease-free survivors Okra, Pepper, Sweet Potato and Eggplant. I say usually because, this year, my eggplant bed is under attack by a new-to-me pest, the False Potato Beetle!
I’ve dealt with Colorado Potato Beetles (CPB) before. Those orangish, black-striped terrors often attack my spring potato crops and occasionally bother early tomatoes. However, I’ve never seen them in late summer on Eggplant. This raised suspicion. Also, I spotted unusual, round, whitish purple creatures munching on leaves from the same plants; these appeared to be the larval stage of the unidentified beetle. A little digging led me to identify these garden pests as the lesser known, lookalike cousin of CPB, the False Potato Beetle.
False Potato Beetle munching on an Eggplant leaf in the author’s garden.
False Potato Beetle (FPB) looks nearly identical to its cousin in the adult stage. They are similarly shaped and colored, though a close look reveals subtle differences between species. While both have yellowish-orange heads and pale-yellow backs with dark stripes, the FPB’s back is slightly lighter hued, more of a whitish, cream color. Also, the CPB’s underside and legs are a very dark orange to brown, with the False Potato Beetle having lighter colored legs and underside. If you’re saying, “These old eyes will never be able to tell the difference, County Agent. Cream and light-yellow look the same to me.”, I get it. Fortunately for those of us with poor vision, the larval stage (babies) of the two beetles looks very different and is the key to correct ID! FPB larvae are larger and have a whitish coloration. CPB larvae, in contrast, are a similar burnt orange color to the adult beetle. I promise, the difference is very distinguishable!
False Potato Beetle is considered a minor garden and agronomic pest as they typically only bother Eggplant, and they don’t usually destroy entire plants. However, if you get a FPB outbreak in your Eggplant garden, they can still be pretty destructive. These beetles feed in the same manner as caterpillar pests, chewing away entire sections of leaves and stems. Unchecked infestations can defoliate entire sections of plants. So, if you find these little beetles eating away at your eggplant garden, what can you do?
False Potato Beetle larvae. Photo courtesy of the author.
First, if you scout regularly, you’ll notice the beetles and their larvae in relatively small numbers before outbreaks become widespread. I had pretty good success this year just catching infestations early and picking off the beetles I saw and squishing them. Continue scouting and squishing for a few days and pretty soon, the population is reduced to a manageable level. However, if squishing makes you squeamish, you also have some common pesticide options at your disposal. I normally encourage clients to start their chemical pest control strategy with “softer” products like Pyganic, a pyrethrin make from an extract from the Chrysanthemum plant. Pyganic works great but is a little harder to find; you may have to order online or ask your local retailer if they can get it for you. If you are unable to find Pyganic or it doesn’t perform for you, the old standby products with carbaryl or pyrethroids (Sevin, Ortho Bug-B-Gone, and others) also work well.
False Potato Beetle can be a late summer garden pain, but with regular scouting, proper insect ID, lots of squishing, and maybe a timely pesticide application or two, you should be able to continue to harvest eggplant deep into fall! If you have FPB in your garden or have another horticultural question, give your local UF/IFAS County Extension office a call! Happy Gardening!
by Daniel J. Leonard | Jul 23, 2020
I enjoy starting my garden from seeds. Ordering seed opens so many more options relative to the limited old-fashioned seed and transplant selections that line garden shelves. Picking newer, improved varieties has several other advantages as well, including increased disease resistance, earlier fruiting, unusually colored/shaped fruit, and generally more vigorous plants. One of the most exciting days of the year in my house is when the cardboard box full of the season’s seed packets comes in the mail! However, I garden exclusively in small, 4’x8’ raised beds and only need a couple of plants of each veggie variety to fill the fridge with fruit; meaning I always have leftover seeds in the packets! In the past, I’ve thrown the excess seed away and chalked it up to the cost of gardening in small spaces, but this spring, as seeds became somewhat hard to come by and several of the varieties I normally grow were out of stock, I started saving and storing my leftover seed packets for future seasons to ensure I have what I want! You can save and store seeds too, here’s how.
Cauliflower seed waiting for the fall garden in the author’s refrigerator.
Properly storing your leftover seeds is a relatively simple process. While seed longevity definitely varies somewhat according to species, regardless of how they are treated by you, remembering the following few tips can help improve the stored seeds’ viability and vigor for the next season.
- Store Cool. Seeds like to be stored in a refrigerator around 40 degrees F. Seeds stored warmer, near room temperature, or colder, as in a freezer, will decline much more rapidly than those in the fridge.
- Keep it Dry. Humidity or moisture in the seed storage area is a sure way to reduce the shelf life of seeds. Store dry in plastic bags or glass containers and add a dessicant. Dessicants help keep storage containers dry and can be found for around $1 each from various online purveyors, making them a cheap insurance policy for your home seed bank!
- Don’t Store Pelleted Seed. These days, you can buy pelleted seed for many of the smaller seeded vegetable varieties, like lettuce and carrots. The pelleting process and materials used, while making it easier for old eyes and those of us with fumbling fingers to plant, reduces seed longevity. Do your best to plant all the pelleted seed you purchase. If you store pelleted seed, don’t say you weren’t warned when next season’s germination is poor!
- Plant All Stored Seed the Next Season if Possible. Remember, that while most non-pelleted vegetable species’ seed can remain viable in storage for more than a year, it’s best to only store seeds until the next season and use them up. Regardless of how well you store them, seed germination percentage (how many in the lot will sprout when planted) and vigor (how strong the germinating seedlings are) decline in direct proportion to time spent in storage.
- Plant Old Seed Heavy. As germination rates in storage may have declined, it’s best to plant stored seed a little thicker than you normally might. If you need a squash plant in a certain spot, instead of just planting one seed, put three or four in the hole to ensure you get a plant. You can always thin extras later, but time lost replanting cannot be regained.
By following these few simple tips, you can waste a lot less seed and ensure that you have what you want to plant for the following year! As always, if you have any questions about saving and storing seed or any other agriculture or horticultural topic, please contact us at the UF/IFAS Calhoun County Extension Office. Happy Gardening!
The following resources were used as references when writing this piece and may prove helpful to you also, check them out:
- Johnny’s Selected Seeds Seed Storage Guide: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/tools-supplies/seed-storage-guide.html
- Seeding the Garden EDIS Publication: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/vh026#:~:text=Storing%20Leftover%20Seeds,better%20than%20in%20the%20refrigerator.
