29 Jul Pesky Plant Pests!

Summer is here and with our long warm lazy days come with some pesky issues that always seem to pop up with the heat. In our next blog series we’ll provide some helpful tips to keep plant pests and mosquitos at bay and ways to keep your garden growing in dry months so you can enjoy your outdoor space in the summer.

This heat likes to wake up some of the bigger annoyances for us gardeners. Diseases and those pesky insects. Sometimes they seem to Spring up so quickly it feels like we didn’t have time to act. So here are some tips to try to prevent, strategize or eliminate those pesky issues:

Just give me some space! When installing our plants, we want to try to give them the best chance for success naturally. So that means trying our best to give them the space they need to grow. This in turn will increase airflow, which makes it harder for funguses to attach and for insects to hold on.

Only you can prevent powdery mildew! Listen, we all do it, and speaking for myself, we never learn. It is hard not to try and pack a few more plants into the beds or gardens. So if you are like me, or you know you have a plant susceptible to various diseases ( think phlox, peonies, cucumbers, etc.), then we need to game plan accordingly. Fungal diseases are something we can easily prevent, so when we are getting the beds ready, start to apply your fungicides to the places you need to, and try to stay on top of treating them throughout the summer.

Stopping Aphid offensive. When you are seeing bugs on your plants and they begin to eat away at the lush growth that you have witnessed throughout the Spring, it can be very frustrating. First, let’s try to identify what bugs we are dealing with. Listen, I know this may not be a popular sentiment, but some of these creepy crawlies do a lot of good in the garden. So when we identify these as pests, let’s see if we can remove them by hand first. If they have taken over and the threat has become too much, then we can look to use sprays to kill the insects. It is important when using your spray to try your best to cover the flowers up when applying. This will keep the insecticide off the flower and allows for our pollinator friends to do their job without harm!

We have battled all winter to enjoy our wonderful summers, so let’s not let a few yard problems weigh them down. Whether it is the first fresh cut peony of the year or the lazy summer nights with the fireflies, let’s all enjoy the outdoor time we worked so hard to get to! For more summer tips check out our blog post on Watering Well and Buzz Off Mosquitos!