July 2026: Victory Gardens

Hey Listener, 

In this month's episode, we’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States, by chatting about Victory Gardens! During some of our darkest moments American's came together to grow fresh produce for themselves and their community from sea to shine sea. 

Fun fact: By May 1943, Victory Gardens supplied 40% of the produce in America, and there were roughly 20 million gardens across the U.S.

Resource used in this episode: 

• Victory Gardens on the World War 2 Front NPS
• Smithsonian Cultivating America’s Gardens
• Examples of Gardening Comic Books
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

We also have our : 

• Native Plant of the Month: Squash
• Bug of the Month: Milkweed Leaf beetle
•  Monthly Garden Tips

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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).

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Transcript

Mikaela 0:09

Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland Extension presents the Garden Time podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Mikaela.

Rachel 0:21

I'm Rachel.

Emily 0:22

And I'm Emily.

Mikaela 0:24

And in this month's episode, we're talking about the history of Victory Gardens.

Rachel 0:38

Alright, everybody, let's dig into the soil of America's past to discover how ordinary citizens help shape the fabric of our nation's history. As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, we're taking a closer look at a symbol of patriotism, resilience, and community, the Victory Garden. Grab your garden gullips, imagine rows of vegetables stretching across the American landscape, and join us as we unearth how Victory Gardens help shape the nation's growth and continue to inspire us.

Emily 1:14

So there were some various goals of the Victory Garden program in World War I and II. So the first one was to increase productivity and consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Part of it was also to encourage the proper storage and preservation of garden surplus for families, school lunches, welfare agencies, and local food emergencies. So think of canning and drying and other food preservation efforts. One of the goals was to save families and institutes money on the cost of fresh produce. Another goal was to provide community gardens for urban dwellers and others who lacked suitable garden area. And then the last goal was to maintain and improve the moral and spiritual well-being of individuals, family, and the nation through physical exercise, recreation, and stress relief. So a lot of those are very similar goals to why we would, in general, garden with the overarching goal of helping to kind of feed the nation in a wider sense.

Mikaela 2:17

What's interesting is that this goal of like stress relief recreation was given even way, way back in the early 1900s, and they didn't even have the research back then to really support that, even though now we're starting to come out with the research that there is something very stress-relieving about working in the garden and working in the soil. I just find it really interesting.

Emily 2:45

One of the things that I found when we were diving this that wasn't so much the victory gardens as the school gardens was that they would literally take urban kids to like rural areas and make them like help with gardening and farming to help build moral character. Because so there was this big sense of like you need to get your hands dirty and you need to go like do this kind of stuff. So yeah. So, Rachel, do you want to give us a little bit of a history of the Victory Garden?

Rachel 3:13

You guys know I love history. I love to do a deep dive on things to find out just like how everything can be interconnected without us really realizing it. And Victory Gardens were home and community gardens that were promoted during World War I and World War II to supplement the national food supply, like Emily said, to improve household nutrition and to support wartime efforts. Citizens were encouraged to convert their lawns, vacant school lots, school grounds like baseball diamonds, and public spaces into productive gardens that grew vegetables, fruits, and herbs. An interesting key factor here in the success of food gardens or victory gardens was the support provided by the cooperative extension system. Cooperative extension was established through the Smith Lieber Act of 1914 and served as a partnership between land grant universities and the United States Department of Agriculture and state and local governments. Extension agents translated university research into practical science-based guidance for farmers, families, and communities. And that's what we're doing today with extension as well. That's our goal is to translate non-biased research-based information and take that to our communities. During both world wars, cooperative extension became a critical avenue for victory garden education. Extension specialist developed gardening manuals, distributed seed recommendations, conducted demonstrations, organized training programs, and provided technical assistance on soil preparation, pest management, crop selection, food nutrition, and food preservation. Through 4-H programs, home demonstration clubs, and community workshops, Extension helped millions of Americans become successful gardeners regardless of their prior agricultural experience.

Mikaela 5:30

So Victory Gardens actually were originally named War or Liberty Gardens, but the term Victory Garden kind of came after World War II. But it started around the time of World War I, which was about 1914 to 1918. And it was kind of set forth as a challenge from our then president Woodrow Wilson. So Americans were challenged to plant vegetable gardens to ward off some threats of food shortages. And many Americans took up the challenge in the name of civic and patriotic duty, but probably also out of necessity, right? So front yards, backyards, schoolyards, vacant lots, they were all transformed into vegetable gardens. Basically, where you had spare land, it kind of became an opportunity. And they were even encouraged to incorporate edible plantings into existing garden beds. So instead of planting bulbs, it was encouraged to plant something that had edible tubers. Or instead of annual flowers, you were encouraged to do something like squash or something that would sustain you. So America became the world's leading seed supplier during World War I because Europe faced seed shortages. So not only were gardens a source of food, but it was also a source of seed for future crops. The school gardening movement joined the war effort during World War I when the Federal Bureau of Education introduced the United States School Garden Army. So 2.5 million children were enrolled in this school garden army in 1919, uh producing food valued at $48 million at that time, which is incredible. That's very significant. And again, the term victory garden uh wasn't even really coined until the end of the war.

Rachel 7:19

That's absolutely amazing that school gardens basically transformed the face of school and kids supplying healthy, nutritious food. That's really, really amazing.

Emily 7:36

I know. So when we typically think of victory gardens, um, that term continued through to World War II, which is where I think most of us, when we hear it, think of, because this is when um a lot of like the more brightly charismatic colored posters come in, where we, you know, like grow for the community, food fights wars, and and those kinds of more charismatic ones. So as the United States entered World War IIs, Eleanor Roosevelt was actually a big component of planting Victory Gardens, and she had one put on the White House lawn in 1943, along with millions of others who gardened throughout those years. So some uh really common ones that we have historical records and photos of would be there was a fairly nice size one at the City Hall of the Boston Commons. There was also portions of the San Francisco Golden Great Park had various garden plots. So starting early on, they had about 250, and by the end, they had over 800 mini garden plots that people could farm. And this was pretty common across the United States where you would have public lands or parks where they would be converted into small gardening plots that people could come and garden and grow food. So many Americans had gardens prior to World War II. Um, following World War I into and through the Great Depression, a lot of people, if they were able to, would continue to garden. But gardening was also new to a lot of Americans as well. So there was a lot of propaganda and marketing to promote the ease of gardening, um, which we know is not as easy and is not as true as it's always made out to be. But the majority of this was targeted to women and children, mainly because men were encouraged to join the armed forces to go fight in World War II or take jobs in factories and stuff like that. So you had magazine books, newspaper articles, comic books, and things like that geared towards women and children that were trying to promote gardening in general and then providing gardening education. This is also when we see the rise of a lot of seed companies kind of hone in on advertising things specifically to a home garden compared to like a farm garden with this. During the Great Depression, you had a lot of people that moved off of the farm into cities, and some of them carried this knowledge with them, but maybe the ability to like buy small amounts of seeds wasn't really there yet. So this kind of helped push the home gardening into like an actual marketing thing where you had companies deciding, oh, we can market these seeds to home gardens, or we can do the combinations of seed packs together with them. So they were focusing more on that limited space, and then again, just like Michaela had mentioned in World War One, incorporating edible plants into like existing gardening landscapes.

Rachel 10:35

I think it's really interesting to look at how marketing changed during this time and how how specifically women and children were targeted with advertisements. Specifically, there's some really cute um Victory Garden comic books like The Mickey Mouse one that called upon young gardeners to enter the green thumb contrast and promote the three V's, which were vegetables, vitamins, and vitality. There's also I know, right? And there's also a really great Batman and Robin, even Superman gardening comic book. I feel like the 1940s were the age of like the comic book. So just having Batman and Robin and Superman on the face of a comic book advertising Victory Gardens is just really awesome.

Emily 11:34

Yeah. I found some pages from one where Donald Doc was trying to teach Huey, Joey, and Louie how to garden. We'll include some pictures of these in the show notes for anyone who wants to see. I think it's a really great pop culture reference to the time.

Rachel 11:50

Not only this, but families in America were issued ration books during World War II, which contained stamps for limited goods like sugar, meat, even cooking oil and canned foods. So Victory Gardens really supplemented these items with fresh food. Popular vegetables that were grown included tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, cabbage. And there was even a push to have people grow soybeans and build them as the wonder bean or miracle bean, which required little room and served as a protein supplement when meat was rationed. I think that's really awesome. The idea was that if people could produce and can a majority of their vegetables at home, it would free up the factory processed canned vegetables for the military. So sweet vegetables like carrots and sugar beets could be used in some recipes to replace sugar.

Emily 13:09

So one of the things that I found that wasn't necessarily related to Victory Gardens in this was that you also had this big movement during the time to save your bacon grease in a can, and you took it to a place and they would take it and turn it into explosives because the fat in your bacon grease can be used in like explosives for bombs. So there was also all these propaganda posters and stuff about like save your bacon grease, bring the like bring it here. And I was like, uh who would have thought? Um, but yeah. That's crazy.

Rachel 13:42

Well, yeah, you could have also used your bacon grease for cooking, too. So like that would have reduced the consumption of the ration, too, if you were using grease for cooking. And not only that, but the women land army members participated in gardening and farm labor, filling in for millions of farm workers who had gone to war. By 1943, Victory Gardens supplied 40% of the produce in America, and there were roughly 20 million gardens across the United States. To me, that's huge.

Emily 14:29

So there is a slight darker side to the Victory Garden because we do have some darker sides in our American history. So many American citizens of Japanese ancestry planted victory gardens when they were unjustly held in internment camps during World War II. So President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II. Um, I believe he also had German descendants as well, also were in these camps. But I think we tend to focus on um the Japanese had a larger proportion that were in them. So in these internment camps, government officials kind of encouraged victory gardening as a way to again promote self-sufficiency and to conserve those resources. So really as a way to supplement fresh fruits and other edible resources. For the individuals in these camps, however, gardening also had some additional motivation to them as it was a way for them to have some edible resemblance of home. It allowed for them to recreate and build community and to re-identify their heritage through this activity. So all those benefits we think of gardening also were benefited here. So the idea of being able to come together as a group to engage in activity potentially to relieve some stress, but also to grow food that you want that's important for you and your family, because this is not a pleasant experience. Like you were uprooted from your home and you're forced to now live in a designated area. In addition to this, many of our fruit and vegetable farmers out on the west coast of the United States were from Japanese descent and Japanese-owned. So preparing for this mass relocation of these individuals, the United States government actually encouraged citizens to take up gardening through advertisements, knowing that these farmers would potentially be uprooted and moved into these camps, so there would be a food shortage. So, and you can find more information about victory gardening and its history in all of its forms. From The Smithsonian has a great article called Cultivating America's Gardens that talks all about the history of gardening, including victory gardening and internment gardening as well. Victory Gardens would also be within mental health facilities and retention centers, were also encouraged to engage in gardening.

Mikaela 17:01

Right, and so by the time World War II was over in 1945, uh victory gardeners had grown between 8 and 10 million tons of food. And then post-war we saw a decline in victory garden activity. People became disinterested because there was a shift to post-war processed foods. So the way we processed foods was a lot different. So former agricultural land became developed in this post-war housing boom. So people were moving outwards from cities to new suburbs, and they had a lot more private yards that were grown more in annual flowers or perennial plants rather than edible plantings. So despite this shift post-war, community garden has not disappeared. Many community gardens in major cities have roots back to the 1940s and still persist today. And there's quite a few resources available out there, especially from like the National Park Service. They have a Victory Gardens on the World War II home front. There's a lot of collections of the American garden history. And then, of course, the Smithsonian Institution has a lot of resources, including a lot of really cool posters and images that they use, kind of propaganda that they use to promote victory gardening back in the 1940s and before then. So I really highly recommend people check out those resources because they are really neat and we can't share those visuals with you on the podcast. Maybe we can include those links in the show notes, though, so people know where to go.

Emily 18:40

I think in addition to the gardening posters, some of these canning ones are really great. Like just the visual imagery of them is very kind of fun. This is also where you start to see a lot of garden clubs putting out manuals. So a lot of our earlier manning and canning manuals are also popping up around this time. And some of them have some really fun-looking covers to them as well.

Mikaela 19:06

I'm feeling kind of inspired to start growing more vegetables in my yard rather than. I know, you know, I love my native plants, but um there's just something really functional about using your spaces for for making food. I mean, really, it's incredible.

Rachel 19:28

I mean, I don't think there's anything better than like going out in the garden, like first thing in the morning with my cup of coffee to see like, do I have a tomato today? Or is my dill bolted and now I have flowers so I can make pickles?

Native Plant of the Month

Mikaela 19:52

It's the native plant of the month with Mikaela.

Emily 20:00

Love the fact that you're talking about this as a native plant, Michaela, because it's one of the things that my one of my favorite native bees is the squash bee. So I always tell people like if you want to plant something for a native bee, you can theoretically just plant squash.

Mikaela 20:15

Yes, right. So my native plant of the month is a little bit different this time. What I selected was cucurbitaceae or the squash family. And and I just would like to preface that um I don't know the detailed history of native squash in America, but certainly it's it's become quite an industry. Uh what I would like to say is that there's many cucurbitaceae or squash species that were native to North America. Um, but of course, squash grow globally. So, you know, there's lots of different varieties or species that grew in different areas of the world. But first, I think it's worth acknowledging, just as Emily has, that our American history has not always been very positive or there's a dark side to it. I would like to acknowledge that there are many Native American tribes that occupied the land that we live on today, including the Piscataway, Sisquehanna, and Nanacoke peoples of Maryland, and that this land was taken in the tribes displaced by the United States government. The information I'm about to share is meant to honor the long-standing relationship that Native Americans have had with the land long before European settlement. Native Americans cultivated squash long before colonialism, usually as part of the Three Sisters system that includes corn, beans, and squash. And this predates European arrival by the Haudenosawne people, or people of the Longhouse. And it was made up of several different tribes around the Lake Erie in the now today New York, Pennsylvania region. So squash have a long relationship with civilization, with seeds that can date back to 12. Thousand years ago, and that's to North America. I believe that was Mexico, is where they found those seeds, but still North America. It is believed to be the oldest cultivated food in North America and an incredibly important source of nutrition for indigenous peoples. So squash or cucurbits are a diverse family with a notoriety for being very promiscuous. So what that means is they crossbreed very easily and explains why we have so many different kinds of varieties of winter and summer squashes. And if you're interested in learning more about squashes, like an in-depth, especially the different kinds of varieties available, we did have an episode in our first season of the podcast, October 2020. It was episode 12 about squashes, pumpkins, and gourds. So there's no way I can cover all the different types that have been bred and cultivated today, but there are two varieties mentioned by the Smithsonian Institution. Actually, not just the Smithsonian, but in other articles I have found as well. White scallop summer squash is the first one. It was a Native American heirloom grown by tribes in the Northeast for hundreds of years, and is depicted in Europe as early as like 1591. And that's one thing I don't think I mentioned earlier is that the use of squash became really popular in Europe after colonialism, of course, after Europeans started settling the Americas. Squashes would get sent back and it became incredibly popular because they they taste amazing, right? Like no surprise there. But one of the things I want to mention is the difference between summer and winter gourds, or I'm sorry, summer and winter squash. There really isn't any difference. They both are pucurbits. Um, one just has developed a harder rind, those tend to be the winter squashes that that store for longer. Summer squashes are just harvested before that rind um really develops. So it's it's more tender. It's something that we can just slice and eat the outer edge as is. But coming back to the white scallop summer squash, so this is a type of patty pan squash named for its small round squat shape. And if you Google patty pan squash, they are the funniest shaped squashes. I love it. They have scalloped edges, um, and these can be sliced, breaded, fried, pickled. I mean, you can you can eat them pretty much any kind of way. They're my favorite squash.

Rachel 24:38

Favorite. I love them.

Mikaela 24:41

Patty pan.

Rachel 24:42

I just like the name. It's just they're so adorable. And I love that they you can get them in not only white, but yellow and green too. They're amazing squash. But I I will say that I like to pick them when they're small, so when they're like baseball to like softball size versus something larger, because they will just keep growing and growing. And once they get too big, they get really pithy, you know, and seedy. So I like the small babies. Yeah.

Mikaela 25:16

Again, if you harvest them when they are younger or you know, smaller, they tend to be a little bit more tender and easier to eat. But if you're wanting something for storage, like winter storage, you want to eat it later, um, that's where the winter squashes kind of come in. The other squash I want to mention because it has a really cool history, is the Gede Okosoman or Gede Kosman squash. There's debate on what the actual name is, but that's kind of the variety name we use today. Um, and this is famously nicknamed the 800-year-old squash after a false story circulated that the seeds were discovered during an archaeological dig. That's not necessarily true. They didn't just like find these 800-year-old seeds and then start growing them. Um, the real story is that the Miami people of today, Indiana, have been growing this for centuries and it dates back maybe even thousands of years of cultivation. And its history kind of revolves around the Great Lakes tribes of the Midwest. And this particular variety received the Anishinabe name of Geti Okosoman, um, roughly translated to cool old squash, which I think is hilarious. And this squash is truly impressive. That it grows to be about like two to three feet long, um, and it can weigh in as heavy as 18 pounds. So while it's not like pumpkin giant pumpkin size, this is pretty big for a squash. And if you take a look at it, um, if you Google the name, it's kind of this long oblong squash, it's like a dark orange color. It is really cool looking. So it is a cool old squash.

Rachel 27:00

That thing looks amazing for a winter squash.

Mikaela 27:04

I know now I want to grow it. It is a winter squash. I know that's what I mean. Like, as soon as you start looking at this stuff and you read about the history, it's just like I kind of want to grow it just to be just to be part of things. And save some seeds and share them with your neighbor, right? Exactly. Yeah, and that's that's a key point as well, is that um, you know, we talk a lot about victory gardens. There's a lot of community that also surrounded um victory gardens and just community gardens in general, is uh it really is about sharing this this growth with your community, making sure seeds can come to future generations um and kind of preserving this history. So I thought that was kind of a cool sideline. Not my not my traditional need of plant of the month talk. Um but now I want to grow like all the squashes, except that I have squashes.

Rachel 28:01

We all do. We all do, right?

Emily 28:04

We all do. I think the neat thing is is some of these less summer zucchini squash don't tend to get the squash vine bore as much. So, like whenever people tell me, like, oh, I stopped growing squash because of the squash vine bore, that's when I say, like, maybe try a patty pan because every year when I grow squash, my summer and zucchinis get hit and they never touch my patty pans. I think it's just a smaller vine that they don't like as much. Knock on wood, this will be the year that they get my patty pans as well. But um, I just think like there's so many different neat varieties out there to try. Why, like, definitely stick with your zucchini and your straight yellow summers if you like them, but like try some of these other ones, they're really fascinating.

Rachel 28:52

Experiment, right? I think that's the beauty of gardening, is that we can there's always different varieties out there that we can try and share. I love it.

Mikaela 29:04

And I think another good way to experiment, and maybe I'm jumping ahead to tips of the month, but you can also plant crops that are um less preferable to to like squash bugs. So there might be a variety that they really, really like, but one that they won't go to unless they're absolutely forced to. So you could almost grow like a trap crop, um, and then they might leave like your acorn squashes alone. I think acorns are fairly squash bugs. You could also are they don't have to be a little bit more.

Rachel 29:33

Yeah, we are gonna get into the tips of the hand. But I think it's also beneficial to like start your squash just a little bit later than normal because I know that a lot of us try to we jump the gun and plant them at like Mother's Day. Give it six weeks. They're fast producers, you know. You could have squash at the end of the summer and might not have as many squash bugs or squash my burger because they've already pupated and said, Hey, there's nothing for me here. I guess I'm just gonna move on, right?

Emily 30:07

Well, and we can circle back to this in tips of the month, but like this is the time of the year where my May squash is starting to die back, like it just isn't producing quite as much because it's been going since May. So this is when I tend to rip them out and put in fresh seeds, anyways. Now, in my winter squash, I tend to leave as I do my watermelons and my other cucurbits both squash. I always find sometimes like the heat of the summer is when I swap them up for fresh plants, in part because the squash vine bore gets to them, but also in part because like sometimes if I'm already replanting my next set of green beans, I can rip those out and put in some fresh squash plants as well. Because, like you said, Rachel, they germinate very quickly.

Mikaela 30:55

Yeah, I think actually, for from some of the limited looking I've done, there's a patty pan squash that's pretty resistant to squash vine border. Um, trombonoteal squash, it's kind of like a long-necked squash, which is an Italian squash, and they all are supposed to be more resistant than others.

Emily 31:15

And you know what? Even if your plant gets covered in squash bugs, you're helping the squash bees, and they're just so adorable that affords dealing with some gross bugs in your garden to help the really cute bugs in your garden as well.

Mikaela 31:28

So do it for the bees. Yes, you should still do it for the bees. I do like that. Do it for the bug.

Bug of the Month

Emily 31:39

What's buzzing? It's the bug of the month of Emily. Okay, this month's bug of the month is one that I actually just found in my garden um like a week or so ago, and it's a it's a little odd because I've been growing milkweed for years, but I've yet to find the swamp milkweed leaf beetle until this year. The swamp milkweed leaf beetle is a member of the Chrysomelidae or the leaf beetle uh family, which is in the order Coleoptera, which is the beetles. So this is a large group of beetles that also include things like the dog bane leaf beetles, Colorado potato beetles, and the three-lined potato beetle as well. So some of those pest beetle species are in there, as well as some of our like nice beetles are as well, but a lot of our pests are in this, but this doesn't include the larger scare beetles. So these are slightly smaller. I call them the round butted beetles because they all have kind of like this big globular like butt as adults versus like they're not kind of like broad and stocky like scarab beetles are, but they're rounded butts.

Mikaela 32:48

It does explain while why the larval stage looks almost identical to its Colorado potato beetle.

Emily 32:56

Oh, for sure. Um, and that's actually what one of the things that someone brought, like sent in a picture to me, and they're like, Why are Colorado potato beetle larvae on my swamp milkweed? Which is when I was like, bring me in one, and then once someone else brought one, I went home and checked my own milkweed plants, and sure enough I had them on mine too, which was kind of interesting. So this is present through most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains, from like lower Canada into northern Mexico, and you'll find it feeding on various uh varieties of milkweed, but it tends to prefer swamp milkweed. Um, that tends to be its preferred one. So, to learn more about milkweed, you can go back to our August 2021 episode where we cover all things great about milkweed. So, but unlike some of the other milkweed kind of insects that you'll find, mainly like the monarch butterfly or the milkweed Tussic moth that will be in your garden. This one tends to like milkweed that's in kind of more of like a natural habitat, so you tend to find it in like the grassy roadside areas and more like meadow milkweed, some milkweed that's like out in the environment more so than out in your garden. But you could still check in your garden to see. When it could feed on milkweed, it does this interesting thing where it starts by clipping the side of the veins off the leaf, which allows that toxic sap to kind of drain out of the leaf before they really start to consume it, which allows them to not have to break down as much of that toxic sap, which is again the plant's defense against being fed on. So the adult leaf beetles are about slightly under half an inch long, and they have this very interesting orange and black pattern on their back, but it does vary a lot individual to individual. So this isn't sort of like a ladybird beetle where it's got like a very distinct pattern, it can kind of change just from beetle to beetle. So they're roughly 12 to 13 millimeters in length. They're gonna have a black head and a black pronatum, which is that um plate that's right behind their head, and then the elytra or their wings that are card and covered, um, are gonna be either like an orange to an orangey yellow coloration with these black, blue kind of splotches throughout them. Now it is symmetrical across the elytra, but the pattern itself is kind of splotchy and can vary beetle to beetle, so it's not gonna be dots the same way like a ladybug beetle is gonna be, but they're more kind of like splotchiness to them. Um, they are oval and kind of robust, so they're a little bit more rounded. One of the things I think is really interesting is their legs have this metallic blue sheen to them, and their tarsi or kind of like their feet slash ankle have this tan line that runs around them, and it makes this um the shape of it is like this little heart. So they are rather small, so you probably wouldn't see this without using a hand lens. But again, if you look at their metallic blue legs, they've just got this little heart-shaped tan kind of pattern on them, which is really cute. The larvae are chunksy or chunky. Um, they look very similar to Colorado potato beetle larvae in that they are that like pale orange color and they have those black dots along the sides. The eggs also look very much like Colorado potato beetle larvae eggs. So if you are out on your milkweed and you notice that it's getting eating really heavily, and you don't see any caterpillars, but you see something that looks like Colorado potato beetle larvae, it's probably these guys. So mating typically occurs on the milkweed plant, and the females will then lay her eggs on the underside. And about a week after the eggs are laid, these round pudgy orange beetle larvae hatch and heavily grazen the plant. Now, one interesting thing I found about them is sometimes they can be cannibalistic in that the first larvae that hatches will turn around and start to eat the eggs of the non-hatched larvae. So they don't eat like their brothers and sisters once their brothers and sisters have hatched, but the the first one that hatches sometimes will feed on the non-hatched eggs. That's pretty hardcore, man. It is. So it's a good thing that milkweeds are very good growers. Um and then once they start to get triggered for kind of fall, the adults will find an overwintering amongst the like sheltered leaves, and then the whole cycle will happen again the following year. So really cool beetle that you might see out on your milkweed.

Rachel 37:50

I love finding this beetle. I feel like it's it's awesome, it's an awesome little find when you find it.

Emily 37:56

Yeah, it definitely is, and it's very like sporadic, and it's not quite as common as like the the butterflies are, but like if you can get a really big patch, or again, if you I think like you're probably more likely to get it, Rachel, out on the farm, like along your ditches and stuff, than like someone who's just got like one milkweed in like a backyard garden. Yeah, I usually um because it seems to like those more like sunny woodland lot milkweed plant.

Rachel 38:27

I usually find it when there's like big swaths of milkweed, when they have like an adequate supply of plant material.

Garden Tips of the Month

Rachel 38:39

It's the tip of the month with Rachel.

Emily 38:47

I'm ready for some tips. Rachel, tell me what I gotta do this month besides water. You know I have to water.

Mikaela 38:53

Rachel, tell me, tell me what I need to do, please.

Rachel 38:56

What I haven't been doing, please. I'm gonna state the obvious here. If you haven't noticed, we're in a drought. The hot, dry weather of summer is officially here. And this can cause significant damage to our plants and our gardens. So when we think about that, we need to make sure that we're monitoring our plants for symptoms and consequences of drought. So that's gonna be like wheat wilting, leaf scorch, reduced vegetable and fruit harvest. You can even get blossom drop because of the heat and the drought, premature fall color on our trees, and even early defoliation. When we think about drought stress, not only are you gonna have these issues, but your plants are stressed, so they're going to be more susceptible to pests and diseases moving forward. For gardeners, the first symptom of water stress in plants is usually wilting. And you'll see this with upward curling leaves or yellowing and browning of leaves, particularly along those leaf margins and tips, undersized or off-flavored fruits and vegetables, undersized leaves with limited shoe growth, premature or immature fruit drop or flower drop. And then in our conifers and our evergreens, you're gonna see interior needle and leaf drop. You might even see some chlorosis of foliage, so that's yellowing between the leaf veins. The secondary and more severe impact of drought stress include increased damage by insects, so whores or spider mites. And you might see an increased susceptibility with certain plant diseases as well. Dude, I need watering. I am drought stressed.

Mikaela 41:09

For real.

Rachel 41:10

Right? It's too hot outside, and our plants are really feeling it. So you're gonna see even blossom and rot with tomatoes and peppers, even squash melons. You might see branch tip dieback of young growth. So, and progressing twig and branch death. So this can also occur in the spring following a severe summer drought. So if you have trees that are just doing poorly, we were gonna drop last year, we were gonna drop them the year before. We also had a really hard winter. So your trees are gonna show that stress now. And everything in your vegetable garden, probably most of your perennial plants, are going to need some supplemental water if you can water either with a rain barrel for your perennial plants, not your vegetable garden, or some drip irrigation system, or even a soaker hose. You want to make sure that when you're giving supplemental water that you're wetting the soil around the base of a plant. Overhead watering is going to encourage plant diseases. If that is your only option, you don't have a soaker hose and you don't have a rain barrel. Just make sure that the foliage dries thoroughly. So you might want to try this in the morning before the heat of the sun gets too hot, because you also don't want to burn your plants as well. I love soaker hoses, and they're an investment that you can make, and then you just store them year after year. After about, you know, three to five years, you might see some damage, but I always check those at the beginning of every season to make sure they don't have any holes. And it's something that's really easy to hook up to your perennial flower beds. In the vegetable garden, you're gonna start harvesting your onions when the tops die back, and you're gonna let them dry in the garden after digging them up. Or you can tie the stems together and hide them in a garage or attic with good air circulation, and then you're gonna store them in a cool, dry place. You're gonna dig up your garlic when the tops yellow and dye, just like the onions. You're gonna let them dry in the sun and then store them in an airy place before braiding, or you can store them in a mesh bag and hang them in a dry place. My favorite insect is active in July, and that is the tomato warmer. During their three with three-week lifespan, these caterpillars can gain more than 1,000 times their weight. I know that most people don't like tomato hornworms because they can decimate your tomato plants because they are such voracious eaters. But I love finding these guys, they're just so cute little caterpillars. And it's really fun to go out in the garden with a little black light flashlight to try to find them because they will kind of glow with those white stripes and that fluorescent green. I love them. Can't say enough about them. And if you're worried about them and you don't like them, that's fine. You can always do a trap tomato plant and just move them over. If the leaves are wilting and you see holes in the lower stem with sawdust-like frass or droppings around the holes, you can slit about an inch above the hole with a razor and remove the larvae and then mound soil around the stem. If this is too much trouble for you, you can also get rid of your squash plant. And I like to put them in a black plastic trash bag and sit it out in the sun to bake. This isn't something you're going to put in your compost pile because the larvae are going to continue to feed on those vines and then they're going to pupate in your compost pile. So those are two options for them. Squash bugs are here, and so are their eggs. And their eggs are really easy to spot in the garden. They're little copper eggs and are often found on the underside of squash leaves and stems. However, if you have a heavy presence, they're going to put them wherever they want. The eggs hatch in about 10 days, and the nymphs mature for about four to six weeks. Both the adults and nymphs like to hide under leaves and they scurry so quickly if you disturb them. They personally give me the heebie jeebies. I don't like squash bubs. They give me the heebie jeebies, and I want to like them because I like squash, I like um tomato hornworms so much, but I just can't. I know they have a place in the cycle of the system, but I just I can't get on board with them. If you're like me, I'm already thinking about my fall garden because it's July and it's hot and I don't want to be outside. So now is a great time to start your seeds of your cold weather crops, like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. You can easily start them inside with seed starting mix and the vegetable heat pads to like germination pads, and then you'll have broccoli to plant in September. And that's all the tips I have for this month.

Emily 47:25

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 um e gardenpodcast at gmail.com. Or look us up on Facebook at Garden Time Podcast. That's Garden T-H-Y-M-E. For more information about University of Maryland Extension and these topics, please check out the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center website at go.umd.edu backslash h G I C. Thanks for listening and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.

Everyone 48:08

Bye!

Mikaela 48:11

The Garden Time Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension, Michaela Boley, Principal Agent Associate in Talbot County for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes, Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture in Queen Anne's County, and Emily Zobel, Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture in Dorchester County.

Emily 48:31

University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regards to race, color, sex, gender identity, or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protective veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.

Rachel 49:13

If you need hydration, so does your garden.