The Garden Thyme Podcast

A monthly podcast where we help you get down and dirty in your garden, with timely gardening tips, information about native plants, and more! The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. https://extension.umd.edu/. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

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The Garden Thyme Podcast

S3:E06 Abiotic Disorder

June 06, 2022 • Garden Thyme Podcast • Season 3 • Episode 6

Hello Listener,

It has been a weird spring weather wise, and that weird weather may have stressed some of your plants out. In this months episode we are talking all about abiotic disorder in the garden. Abiotic disorder in plants are caused by non-living factors such as weather, and the enviroment . We will give some examples of what we have seen so far this year, and what you should be looking for in your garden .

We also have our:

Native Plant of the Month - Bottlebrush grass at 26:45
Bug of the Month -Green Lacewing at 30:15
Garden Tips of the Month at 36:45

If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at UMEGardenPodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcas. For more information about UME and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center and Maryland Grows Blog at https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/.

The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Senior Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County), and Emily Zobel-Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

Theme Song: By Jason Inc

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The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Principal Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture; Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County); and Emily Zobel- Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

Theme Song: By Jason Inc,

Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript: S3:E06 Abiotic Disorder

Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.

:Up Beat Music:

Rachel

Hello, listeners. Welcome to the University of Maryland Extension Presents, the Garden Thyme Podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Rachel.

Mikaela

I'm Mikaela.

Emily

And I'm Emily.

Rachel

In this month's episode, we're talking about weather and other abiotic effects that happen in the garden.

Mikaela

I think it's no surprise that along with some weird spring weather, we can expect to have some effects in the garden as well as our own personal psyche. You get really excited because it gets warm really quick and it feels hot, and then the next day, boom, it's cold. And then it's cold and rainy, and then it's hot and sunny. So this is just as confusing for plants as it is for us because we are just plants with complicated emotions.

Rachel

We are.

Emily

I knew that day that it was like 90 degrees in May. I was like, Mikaela is not leaving her house today.

Mikaela

I know.

Emily

I was like, Mikaela, I'm dying. Mikaela dying.

Mikaela

No, you guys, you know what I had to do? I had to spend 3 hours in the 90 deg weather for a children's birthday party. So 90 degree weather and children's birthday party are two of my favorite things. No, I'm kidding. But no, it is. The weird weather really does stress plants out just as much as it might stress people out.

Rachel

It has been a weird weathery spring. I planted my lettuce back in probably mid March, which is pretty normal for me. And I didn't get my first cutting until the very, very end of May, which is incredibly unusual because I'm usually harvesting spring peas and lettuce and radishes and they've all did very poorly this year because of those fluctuations in temperature.

Mikaela

Well, I'm not glad to hear that, but I'm sort of glad to hear it because the same thing happened to me and I thought it was just my poor vegetable gardening skills. No, it makes me feel better.

Emily

I had the same my broccoli. Normally by now I'd have heads starting to form. The plants are still only leaves. Yeah, it's nuts. So we are going to spend this episode focusing on abiotical effects.

Mikaela

What is an abiotic disorder?

Emily

So abiotic disorders are disorders that are caused by nonliving factors. So this would not be something caused by a disease, not something caused by an insect. This is something that's going to be caused by environmental effects. So think things like the sun, the temperature, the amount of water, wind, soil properties such as PH or nutrients availability, and a lot of our cultural practices can also fit in this. This is where we would also classify things like fertilizer or pesticide burn, as well as something like cutting your grass when it's super hot out and causing it to burn that way would be considered an abiotical effect.

Mikaela

Salt damage from applying salts on sidewalks or driveways. I also think it's really important to mention that a lot of plant issues or diseases. They begin as some kind of abiotic factor, which facilitates growth for bacteria or fungi or something like that. So usually we ask people questions about the growing conditions when they bring us plant issues because that's where it begins. And if a plant isn't happy, it's more susceptible to getting sick. Like people. I'm just going to keep going back to that. We are like plants.

Emily

Yeah.

Rachel

So sometimes with this weather damage, it doesn't show up right away. And other times you might not see signs of stress or damage until weeks later. You might notice some broken branches from winter activity with heavy snow or ice or even hail damage. You can cut back that damage from the cold or physical breakage. But now you're seeing shrubs and trees that have leafed out. It's safe to cut any of those branches that are bare that might have been damaged by cold weather. And I had to do this personally with some of my hydranges when we had that really big fluctuation in temperature. I'm seeing a lot of damage. So I know that this year they're not going to bloom. I went ahead and pruned them back because I was like, I know what this damage looks like and I'm just going to heat it before the plants get too stressed out.

Mikaela

I will also say that evergreens in particular take even longer, could take months after some kind of stress has an effect on the plant. Because they're evergreen, they tend to be a little bit slower in showing those symptoms. So if you're starting to see pine trees or some other evergreen symptoms later in the summer, it's good to note back what happened in the fall, winter, and spring prior to the summer itself. It might not be as immediate as we think it should be.

Rachel

And we usually see that with salt damage.

Mikaela

Yes.

Emily

In particular, I know I've gotten two or three calls of this already happening on Boxwoods, a least favorite plant of this podcast for anyone who knows. And they thought it was Boxwood Blight. And I went out and took a look at it. And of course, I always make the recommendation of rip it out and put in something better because as we all know, we don't particularly like boxwoods on this podcast. But these people decided they wanted to keep them. You're going to need to prune out any of those browning branches because they're not really going to be able to green up.

Mikaela

But there is something called bronzing, which is where evergreens, and this is boxwoods in particular, will take on a kind of coloration. It almost looks like orange to red or even maybe a little bit of purple. And they do get that from winter. I know we've talked about it probably on other podcast episodes, but that doesn't mean that it's dead or that you should prune that growth out. It should be able to bounce back. It usually is pretty negligible as far as damage is concerned. But what Emily is talking about is very obviously dead branches or completely straw brown or completely yellowed is more of what you should be pruning out.

Emily

Yeah, and along those lines, giving your boxwoods a good pruning isn't always the worst because that helps to add more air circulation, which will decrease the likelihood of things like Boxwood Blight really taking hold. But if you do think that you have either bronzing on your boxwoods or potentially boxwood Blight, you can reach out to your local extension office or go to the Ask an Expert feature on the University of Maryland's home and Garden Information Center's website, and you can submit up to three pictures and one of our university experts will take a look and let you know what it is.

Mikaela

Yeah, that's a super good point because thinning out any densely canopied plant will facilitate more humidity, which means more incidence for disease. It doesn't guarantee it, but it definitely reduces that incidence. And now that the shrubs and leaves have fully leafed out, at least the deciduous ones, it'll be safe to cut out those branches that are bare. You might have been waiting to see if they survived the winter, they were damaged by cold or ice. Now it's pretty safe to say that if they don't have leaves on them, they might be too far gone.

Rachel

I bought nine winter berries last fall, planted them, and I only have two that survived. Yeah, and I lost two of my witch hazels this year because of the weather.

Mikaela

Witch hazels are a little finicky. I love witch hazels. You know, I love them. They're a little finicky. So on the flip side, there were trees that had leafed out and looked pretty promising. But I did see a lot of what we call premature leaf defoliation. And basically that just means that trees started to lose their leaves, they started to drop on the ground for whatever reason. Usually that's linked to drought stress. So we see that a lot more commonly in the summer, especially when it's hot, but it can happen sometimes in the spring. We didn't get a ton of rain in April like we normally do, but usually it catches up. And as long as the tree isn't completely defoliated, it should be okay. It should be able to recover from that.

Emily

Yeah, and I think having those wonky upper 80s, low 90 days in the springtime definitely is. Our plants were at a different place, life cycle, leaf cycle wise, in that a lot of them had tender shoots. And why our plants could tolerate that later in the season when the leaves were a little tougher, you may in addition to getting that leaf drop, you may also be seeing things like curling along the edges. They may have a reddish or pale coloration to them because what happens is during that heat stress, the green pigment sometimes breaks down, and most of this damage is superficial. But if you have really young plants or transplants, they may have ended up dying and you may need it to have retransplanted them. It's the one time I was really happy that my tomato transplants were still really tiny because they weren't in my garden yet.

Mikaela

Plant stress or physiological damage occurs at 86 degrees Fahrenheit, which, funny, so do I. I start to die at 86 degrees constantly. So anyways, unless that plant is specifically adapted for the hotter environments, like a cactus or it has a thickened or a leathery leaf where it can kind of handle those hot days, they will start to see that stress. And we saw several days, if not many weeks, of some fluctuating temperatures to that point to 86 degrees.

Rachel

Yeah, and then it would drop down at night to a good like, 50 degrees. So they really can't handle that fluctuating temperature. I mean, I can't handle it either, so I understand where they're coming from when they decide to drop their leaves.

Emily

So, as we are moving into the summer, what are some things that we can do to better prepare our plants for that summer heat?

Mikaela

Nothing. Put me in a pool. Put me in a kiddie pool and leave me to die.

Emily

Well, Mikaela will be in a kiddie pool, but luckily we have some plants that are better equipped to dealing with the heat than Mikaela. It's funny that I didn't know this until recently, but plants actually sweat the same way that humans do as a way to deal with heat. Which is one of the reasons why if you have a drought situation, your plants are going to die faster from heat stress than they would if, say, you had a soaker hose and were watering them in the morning. So some great tips to help combat that summer heat in your garden would be things like making sure that you have some mulch, making sure that they're.

Rachel

Watered, avoiding fertilization during periods of heat stress, that's a really big one. Just because you think that you need to apply fertilizer to your vegetable garden every ten days, you really don't.

Emily

That's a good point, because a lot of people don't realize that fertilizer itself will actually absorb water and will take it away from the roots of the plant. So you're limiting it. Same thing with any sort of chemical applications. You definitely don't want to apply any insecticide or herbicide or fungicide to your garden if it's really hot out, this has the potential to burn your plants.

Rachel

And if you've done any spring or early summer planting along driveways or patios or other structures that can absorb heat or radiate additional heat to the plants, you need to pay special attention to those plants. And they more than likely will require additional irrigation just because they're going to get hotter faster and have more heat stress.

Mikaela

Absolutely. And maybe we can make this as a plug for planting more trees, because trees are very adept at cooling the air in the environment, including by providing shade. So I know that sounds like a simple practice, but really having those trees in the landscape are really critical when it's hot. This might be a good time to talk about this, too. The Chesapeake Bay Trust, they have an urban trees grant program, and their goal is to plant 5 million trees by 2031. And this is for Maryland, and I think they've come up with a position in DNR to support and facilitate the planting of this, but basically for this reason, is to try and help this cooling effect that they provide and to restore some of our environment well.

Emily

And I just think having plants around us makes us all feel better. I mean, we're just a giant emotional plants, apparently. So who doesn't want more emotional plants around them that are actual plants?

Mikaela

Riddle me this. Where do people go and sit when they go out for a picnic? They're going to sit under a tree. Yeah, who doesn't want to sit under the tree unless it's like really messy, like it's a ginkgo or something. Nobody wants to sit under the ginkgo.

Emily

So we've touched a lot about the temperature extremes and some of our weather effects, but what are some other abiotical effects that you guys think are important?

Mikaela

I was just going to say just off the top of our head, I think one of the biggest questions about lawn in particular is whether people are watering too much or too little, because there is a happy medium and we often can't find it. So one of those classic symptoms of both of those situations, which isn't super helpful is the wilting, because too much water or too little is a vascular problem. And so if the vascular system has too much or too little, one of the effects it's going to have is it just goes like limp. So wilting is going to be one of those effects. Normally we associate wilting with too little water, but if you feel like you have been providing more than adequate amount, it could be that you're doing the opposite. You're loving your plant to death. And usually what we shoot for, at least with lawn systems and likely garden beds as well, is an inch of water at least per week. As we probably discussed in one of our previous episodes, if you want to water infrequently, but deeply so, that's why drip irrigation is so effective. You don't want to just throw the inch of water at the plants all at once because a lot of that water gets taken up by transpiration or evaporation.

Mikaela

So you want to make sure that it's getting down into the root systems where the plants can actually use it.

Rachel

So if you've set up your soaker hoses or your drip irrigation system, you want to make sure that you're watering plants in early evening or early morning before extreme temperatures occur. Like Mikaela said, you want to water plants deeply using these methods that minimize leaf wetness, because if you get wetness on your leaf, it's subject to fungal issues or burn or fun scald. So this helps reduce any type of Foliar disease that you might see. It might be a really good idea to invest in a timer for your soaker hoses or your drip irrigation so that you know it's going off at a certain time every day and it's watering for a certain amount. Of time because I have a problem and I usually set mine and forget it and come back 3 hours later and I have a flood.

Emily

I normally get up and turn it on in the morning and then I turn it off before I leave for work. And once I forgot to do that and it ran all day and my backyard was mildly slumpy when I got home.

Rachel

Yeah, and you're on town water, so that's not good. It'll help you save money.

Emily

I mean, it surprisingly only raised my water bill, like $10.

Rachel

Oh, wow.

Emily

So I think one of the other side effects that you'll oftentimes see with regards to too much or too little water is something that we would call nutrient deficiency, because plants require water in order to take up nutrients. So if they don't have the ability to absorb water because there's either not enough water in the soil or there's so much water that they can't pull any up, you oftentimes will also see nutrient deficiency as well as wilting. And I think Mikaela is going to tell us a little bit more about nutrient deficiency.

Mikaela

So you might not know what that term actually means. So deficiency is when symptoms occur as like, yellowing leaves, which we have a fancy word for clorosis, intravenal yellowing, which means that the veins of the leaf that themselves stay green, but all of the tissue in between turns a different color. This could be also abnormal growth or abnormal coloration. Like you might see red, purple or bronze kind of leaves. Not to be confused with any varieties or cultivars that are supposed to be those colors because I often get that call as well. And when we figure out that the particular variety we're speaking about is supposed to be red, it can clear up a lot of issues. One example in particular, it was a type of red bud, and the leaves were like they were green, white and red, like, modeled different colors. It looked like something was seriously wrong with it. No, it was just like a special kind of cultivar that's supposed to look that way. And I was like, well, the leaves look really healthy, but I don't know why it's that color. That's why. So I felt like a prize idiot.

Mikaela

Anyway, happens to the best of us.

Emily

It's hard to tell, and especially with so many different unique varieties out there. I think that's always like a first step is like, okay, if you think it's nutrient deficiency. Has there been weird weather? Has there been this? When's the last time a soil test got done and all that because, yeah, sometimes these varieties are getting more and more unique, so it can be tricky to tell.

Mikaela

So nutrient deficiency can occur for many different reasons. Usually it has something to do with the soil or the growing medium that doesn't have the required nutrients. This is particularly true if you're using containers or are in areas that you routinely Are growing crops, so they drain the nutrients out of that soil on the regular. It can also happen when the soil is not sufficiently moist enough to let those roots take up and transport nutrients. So it's actually just kind of like a drought issue as well. But there can also be other issues. And this kind of leads into what rachel is going to talk more about, is that the PH has a lot to do with how plants can receive nutrients. And each plant has its own requirements for what kind of PH it grows best in. So there's a reason azaleas work best in PHs that are really low or acidic, because that's where their optimal nutrient uptake occurs. The same with blueberries. So PH, if it's out of whack for the plant, can really limit the nutrients and actually create a deficiency in the plant itself, even if those nutrients are available in the soil.

Mikaela

Another example is a nutrient might not be able to reach the organ where it's needed most. And this prime example is blossom end rot in a lot of the solinaceous plants. So tomato, pepper, and eggplant. And we can also see where a too high concentration of one nutrient might actually compete with the uptake of another nutrient. So the example we give is calcium. Uptake can be suppressed by the presence of excess potassium, sodium, or magnesium.

Rachel

Those are some really great tips.

Emily

I think. Aluminum is another one that if you have high aluminum, it can push out something else.

Rachel

Yeah.

Mikaela

And too much aluminum can also create toxicities in the soil. So that's why you should never use what is it? Aluminum sulfate to change the PH. So stay away from that. Yeah. So, Rachel, do you want to talk about why PH is so much significant? I know we talk about this a lot, but I'd love to reinforce that.

Rachel

We do talk about PH a lot. And this is why taking a soil test is so important. It's better to pay $20 for a soil test before you plant something than what is that saying? It's like $200 hole versus the $16 soil test or something like that. No dollar.

Emily

Better to put a $20 plant in a $200 hole than a $200 plant in a $20 hole.

Rachel

Yeah. There you go.

Mikaela

There we go. Ye oldie sayings.

Rachel

The perfect example of this is when I was first starting out with extension. I had a homeowner put in a significant amount trees in. And they all died within six months. And he sunk another big chunk of money to put in the same amount of trees. They all die. So after a year he finally called me and we went out and took a $16 soil test. And his PH was three.

Mikaela

Oh my God.

Rachel

Which is incredibly acidic.

Mikaela

That's a crisis.

Emily

It is.

Rachel

It's a crisis level. And if he would have just done the soil test a year prior before rushing to plant, I could have saved him so much money. So this is why we constantly talk about the importance of doing a soil test. And the soil PH is the measure of how acidic or basic your soil is. And the PH directly impacts which nutrients are available to that plant. A PH scale ranges from zero being the most acidic to 14 being the most basic and seven is neutral. Plants have different PH preferences, just like Mikaela mentioned. Azaleas, rhododendrons, blueberries and some conifers prefer acidic soil. So they like to be in a range of a PH of 4.5 to 5.5. And then vegetables and grasses and most ornamentals grow best at a PH of about 5.5 to seven. And these values, significantly above or below the ranges, can result in less vigorous growth or symptoms of nutrient deficiency or toxicity. So when we're seeing some funky leaves or just some weird symptoms, we automatically say, when is the last time you had a soil test? Because that will tell us a lot more than usually a leaf.

Emily

Yeah, I think it's important to note that when we're talking about soil tests, we're talking about taking a sample and sending it to a reputable lab. And you can find a list of those on the University of Maryland extensions home and Garden Information Center. We're not talking about going to a big box store and buying one of those color changing kits because while that might tell you my PH is light green, which means it's six, if you have to change your PH, it's not going to tell you how much or how little of something you need to do that. So for the same amount of money you spend on that color changing kit, you can send the sample away to a lab, and you can get a wide variety of your nutrients as well as your PH and your PH buffer as well as recommendations, which I think is really what you're paying the most for is recommendations on how to make your soil the healthiest it can be.

Rachel

Also, when you're looking at soil test labs, please go with a lab that's in your area or in your region, because the recommendations that you get from the University of Delaware or Pennsylvania or another lab in Maryland is going to be completely different than a recommendation you would get if you sent it to South Carolina or Georgia or the Midwest.

Emily

That's a good point, especially for our listeners who don't live in the state of Maryland. You guys should reach out to your local extension office to see where they're recommending getting and mailing a soil test to.

Mikaela

And on the other end of the spectrum, I know we talk a lot about plants that love acidic environments. There just aren't as many that prefer a more alkaline environment. They tend to have a broader range that include the optimum level that we talk about, which is 6.2 to 6.8. There isn't really a counterpart to a plant that needs to grow in alkaline soil. They can tolerate up to a certain level, but there's nothing that specifically needs to grow high up on the PH scale.

Rachel

That's a great point.

Mikaela

I just want to make that known because I had to look that up once.

Emily

It's really neat to see that we've got plants that have evolved to be more acidic and haven't necessarily seen that same shift in the other way.

Mikaela

Quite a few vegetables that tolerate up to a higher level of PH. Yeah, which I thought was interesting.

Emily

That's really cool. If you want to know more about soil health and soil chemistry, we recommend checking out our April episode from 2020. So I know that a long time ago, but we had Dr. Nicole Filoelli come on to talk all about soil health and why taking a soil test is so important, although we sort of just hit that point. But she'll talk about how to do it and a lot more about soil health. So if you want to fall down this rabbit hole a little bit more, we recommend checking out that episode.

Rachel

I'm a big rabbit holer.

Mikaela

I think that's how our episodes really just evolve, rabbit holes.

Emily

So hopefully that helps answer a bunch of questions that you guys would have about abiotical effects. And generally speaking, if you were seeing things that are happening in your garden and they tend to be over large areas involving multiple different plant species, then you're probably looking for an abiotic effect and not something biotical. And again, you can always go to the Ask an Extension feature on the Home and Garden Information Center.

Mikaela

And I also think on that same vein of thought is that you're looking for very uniform damage as well that tends to be more abiotic rather than biotic, which is a little bit more random.

Rachel

And I would like to add to that Ask extension, if you're not in Maryland, you can still submit a question, and it will be sent to an extension agent in your area.

Mikaela

Great point, Rachel. Thank you.

: Bird chirping: It's the native plan for the month with Mikaela.

Mikaela

So you guys will not be surprised that I had picked out whole different other plant. I had written something up about it, but I was not excited about it, so I had to change my native plant of the month.

Emily

I just noticed that you did change it, too.

Mikaela

And surprise, surprise, big surprise, it's a grass. So it's been a long time since I've gushed about a native grass, so I'm going to go ahead and do that now.

Emily

To be fair, you've gushed about native grasses off of the podcast very recently.

Mikaela

That's true. I talk about them quite frequently, but I realized the podcast has been missing.

Emily

Some the podcast has been missing a native.

Mikaela

So I picked for my native plants of the month. My favorite cool season grass that's just coming into fluorescence is Bottlebrush Grass, which is Elymus hystrix. So this grass looks exactly like it sounds. The seed head looks like you could pop it off and use it in your dishes, but I don't recommend it because it doesn't work that well. It has very large seed heads with very large seeds. So these large seeds have extremely long fixtures that are called ons. And basically these are just an extension of the seed that aid in its distribution or just kind of helps it in some kind of ecological way. I really don't know the ins and outs of all the ons, but grasses have varying lengths of ons. The seed heads can make really interesting arrangements or cut flowers, particularly after they dry out. So this is a clump forming, so it doesn't spread like a mat. It really does look like a clump of grass. And it's what we call a cool season grass, meaning that it does the majority of its growth and maturity early in the season before it gets too hot. So it has a really neat texture in the landscape.

Mikaela

And even after it browns or kind of like dies back and dormant, it creates some really neat structure. I love the seed heads. The seeds actually persist pretty well on the seed head itself. So this is a fairly medium sized grass. It gets about 5ft tall, maybe with the flowers on it. And it's a pretty tolerant of shade to part shade. It's also very drought tolerant, although it prefers a more medium moisture. And it handles almost any soil type. So it does clay, loam, sandy, it does pretty well. But where it will look the most natural is in areas that are naturalized. So it looks like a native plant. Okay. And it does like, riparian buffer systems as well as woodland and like, open meadow habitats. But I think it looks so neat, it could really belong in a more structured garden as well. And like I said, the seeds are pretty large, so they'll be eaten by birds. But if the birds leave it alone, this grass will self seed pretty freely, but not aggressively. So it's kind of like a happy plant to have because you can easily get little baby plants and transplant them around.

Mikaela

But it's not so aggressive that you feel like you are beating it back all the time. So it's. No surprise. I think everybody should have a space in their yard for this special plant.

Emily

I like it.

Mikaela

I know. I got really excited thinking about it. I had to trash my last native plant. I was like, no, you can devote.

Rachel

Every single native plant of the month that's right.

Mikaela

To grass grasses all year round.

:Buzzing sound: What buzzing? It's the bug of the month of Emily.

Mikaela

So, Emily, what's our native bug of the month? Or sorry, what's our bug of the month? Not native bug of the month.

Emily

Yeah, I mean, it is a native bug of the month, actually. So this month's bug of the month is one that is a good beneficial bug, but I feel like it's sort of underappreciated sometimes. I think when people think of beneficial insects, they think of bees that pollinate or like if you're talking about a predator, everyone thinks of like the praying mantis or the ladybird beetle or spiders. But we have these really cool insects called Lacewings that are pretty voracious predators in their larvae stage. So there's lots of different families. So lace wings sort of a general term, but I'm going to focus on the green Lacewings this episode, which is in the family chrisopidae and these guys specialize in preying on soft bodied insects. So these are going to be things that are going to go after the first 2nd instar, small caterpillar and aphids. These guys love aphids, so they are a great bug to have in your garden. There's about 1300 species worldwide and we have about 16 to 20 species that can be found in Maryland, depending on how the temperature goes. We're sort of at the border of some ranges.

Emily

These guys do commonly have several generations throughout the year, as long as we have a moderate temperature that year. So around here in the mid Atlantic, you will get several generations of them. Lace wings in general come in a wide variety of shapes and colors and sizes. There is a variety that are brown, there are some that have more fancier wings, there are some that are darker and speckled and tan and all that. But the adult green lace wing is about three, four an inch long and they're generally a light green color. Sometimes they're kind of Armyish green, depending on the species, or they can even be brown. They get their names from the fact that their wings have a lacey or netlike appearance. So they've got lots of kind of cross veins that go back and forth. So think of like if you took like a fisherman's net and held it up, but then put it on an angle, that's sort of what the netting on their wing looks like. And these guys are part of the net wing insect order. Neparatra. Another characteristic that you will notice of these guys is they have really big eyes that are sort of front, but off to the side a little bit.

Emily

So their eyes, sort of like bump out. The adults will actually mostly feed on nectar and pollen, but occasionally they will feed on some soft bodied insects. The larvae are the more predatorial life stage, and the larvae are brown and white, and they can grow to be about half an inch in length for some of them. They are elongated and flattened with sort of legs that run off to the side, and they kind of look like tiny little alligators. And they have these large, curved mandibles out on the front of them. So that's kind of something that you'll see these guys and you'll say, oh, man, that's a predator, because it's got these big gnarly teeth up front. And an interesting fact is that the larvae in certain genera, specifically Ceraeochrysa, have been known to cover their bodies in plant debris or the remains of their prey as a way to camouflage themselves.

Mikaela

That's pretty savage. They are really cool.

Emily

Yeah. And we have one species of this genre that is found in Maryland. They tend to be on the smaller side. Most people will recognize these not so much from the adults, but they'll recognize them from the egg stage. The egg stage is very iconic. The eggs can be laid either singular or in small groups. Each one is always found perched on the tip of a hairlike stalk, and they tend to be anywhere from about a fourth of an inch to half an inch long up that stalk. And what this basically does is it reduces cannibalization of lace wings, either feeding on their siblings or ants preying on them as well. So what happens is when the larvae hatches out, it has to climb down the stock to get to the plant and to get to its food. But they're too heavy to climb back up the stalk, so they can't get back up to eat the eggs of other ones. And one female can actually lay about 100 to 300 eggs during her lifetime. So you can purchase these guys for biological control to put in your backyard. And ideally, again, you're going to want to purchase the larvae because they're the more voracious feeders, so they're going to be the ones to really take care of your pests.

Emily

But ideally, these guys have been found to be really effective in greenhouse settings. I actually recommend the better thing to do for your backyard is to diversify your plantings as a way to entice the actual native species to come in, rather than to continuously purchase and dump them in there. So in some things that you can do in order to increase the lace wing population in your garden is avoid using broad spectrum and persistent insecticides mitocides fungicides, and then you can grow plants that would provide the nectar and the pollen for those adults. So that's a good way to sort of entice these guys in and just creating a more diverse landscape. So having trees and bushes and tall flowers and small flowers and grasses. More than just a flat out lawn will also increase not only these, but a lot of your other natural enemies and beneficial insects. So that is the green lace wing.

Mikaela

They are really cool. The larvae is super angry, though. I got one on my arm once, and I kept feeling like, this kind of, like, pinch. It doesn't hurt super bad, but I just kept feeling this, like, little pinch, and I look down and it's just, like, working its way up my arm.

Rachel

I love to find their eggs on different things. I always find them on my milkweed. It's a pretty common occurrence on my milkweed. There's long stalks.

Emily

They'll just be on the bottom getting right milkweed as much as we love them. For the monarchs have, I believe, two or three species of aphids that will always get on your milkweeds. And normally we're okay with it because the milkweed is out there for the bucks anyways. But yeah, you'll always normally find some of these guys on that once those milkweed aphid populations grow.

Rachel

Yeah, I think it's the oleander. Is it the ole?

Emily

I think it's the oleander.

Rachel

It's like bright orange. And the lace wing larvae will just come in there and jig. They're so cute.

Emily

I eat them all. So, yeah. Keep an eye out for the green lace wing in your garden this summer.

:Horns: Get your tip of the month here with Rachel.

Emily

Okay, Rachel. Do we have some garden tips of the month?

Mikaela

Rachel never has any tips.

Emily

No tips from Rachel.

Rachel

You know, we're gonna have a lot.

Emily

I mean, there's a lot going on in our garden.

Mikaela

That's true.

Rachel

In a few weeks, we are going to celebrate the official start to summer on June 21. And for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, the variety of vegetable plants that you plant after this point will become fall crops. So here are some helpful tips to help you grow a successful garden as we transition from spring into summer. In your vegetable garden, young tomato plants may begin exhibiting symptoms of leaf spot diseases such as septoria and early blight. Remove those badly infected lower leaves and discard them in a black trash bag off your property. Keep a thick organic mulch around the base of your plants and avoid overhead watering. Pinch off any tomato suckers. And those are the ones that kind of get into the branches. So you'll see a Y branch, and then you'll see a sucker coming up in between that Y. And this helps encourage larger, earlier fruit, especially if you're training it into one central stem. If you want a bushy tomato plant, go right ahead and leave those suckers. And we also see some june drop of excessive fruits, especially in peaches. This is a natural thinning phenomenon, and it's more pronounced where no hand thinning has occurred.

Rachel

You can hand thin fruits on plum, peach, apple and pear trees, leaving space the width of one fruit in between the remaining fruit. Disease and insect problems, environmental stress and lack of pollination or fertilization can also cause fruit drop. So this is where it's really important to get a soil test in between. To make sure you are managing your nutrients properly, pick up and throw out any dropped or disease fruits. There are some insects that really love those rotting fruits and will cause havoc on your property.

Emily

Yeah, and they're not always insects that we like. Well, some of them can be beneficial. Some of them are also some of our stinging insects. So particularly if you have small children or someone who is vulnerable to stinging insects, you definitely want to make sure that you clean those up.

Rachel

Yes. Thank you. Flea beetles are a serious pest of eggplant and can also affect potato, tomato and members of the cabbage family. Floating row covers are an effective way to manage flea beetles, but they should be removed when your plants begin to flower. To allow for cross pollination of bumblebees, you can spray your eggplant with Surround. This is a kaolin clay, and it creates a white film that minimize flea beetle feeding. You can also control flea beetles with neem, that's a botanical insecticide. If you like string beans, it's the perfect time to plant a second crop. Keep watering and weeding and mulch new crops to keep them from drying out. Learn to identify beneficial insects like our green lace wing, and keep a village and eye out for possible pest infections. You're going to hand pick cabbage, worms and broccoli and other members of the cabbage family. But let's be real. If you're still growing cabbage plants on the eastern shore of Maryland, it's time to rip those out of your garden and make room for your summer crop.

Emily

Mine never got big enough to put on anything.

Rachel

Mine usually get just the right size and then they bolt.

Emily

You know what? Even that would have made me happy, but they just didn't even head because it's been so cold. Oh, well, I'm going to try again in the fall. I always do way better when cold crops in the fall.

Rachel

So do I, because we have that longer cold period, so they usually do a little bit better. If you have slug damage, you can set out some tuna cans filled with beer or a brew of molasses, water and yeast, and those slugs will crawl into them and drowned.

Mikaela

I love the wiggle you included. They'll crawl in.

Rachel

You could also do some boards with grapefruit rinds turned face down to attract slugs. And then you turn the board over and the rind in the morning and destroy the slugs in a way that you find appropriate. If you want to grow some pumpkins for the fall, now the time to plant pumpkin seeds for fall harvest. And, well, that's all the tips I have for the month.

Emily

Guys, those are some great tips.

Rachel

I didn't mention my arch nemesis, squash bugs, because they're going to be out.

Emily

Yeah, they'll be in the July episode.

Mikaela

The reason I don't grow any cucurbit anymore.

Rachel

I did make a stance this summer that I'm not growing any squash plants because I always have such a ravenous group of squash bugs and I can't stand them.

Mikaela

Maybe taking a break is good to break the cycle.

Rachel

I'm going to take a two year break of squash plants. I figure I can support farmers markets and buy some squash from people that might not have a squash bug problem.

Emily

Yeah, no, I think that sounds awesome. I like it. I fully support you protesting squash bugs by not growing squash. And now you don't have to worry about squash wrangler either.

Mikaela

Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoyed it, and we'll tune in next month for more gardening tips. If you have any garden related questions, please email us at umegardenpodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at gardenthymepodcast. That's garden. T-H-Y-M-E for more information about the University of Maryland extension and these topics, please check out the University of Marylandextension Home and Garden Information Center website at go.umd.edu/hgic. Thanks for listening, and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden. Goodbye.

Rachel

The Garden Time Podcast is a monthly podcast brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Mikaela Boley, senior Agent Associate for Talbot County. Rachel Rhodes, senior Agent Associate for Queen Anne's County, and Emily Zobel, senior Agent Associate for Dorchester County University.

Emily