Ep. 259 Summertime garden Q&A | #GoodGrowing

Chris Enroth: 00:05

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. We got some summertime questions. Yeah. We have been outside sweating it up, and the questions have been coming in.

Chris Enroth: 00:22

So we are gonna answer those today. You know I'm not doing this by myself. I'm joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Ken Johnson: 00:32

Hello, Chris. It's it's definitely warm out there. Although, by the time people listen to this, I think it'll have cooled off a little bit. It's probably gotten hot again, so who knows?

Chris Enroth: 00:44

It's the the roller coaster of summer. Hot and sort of not hot. But, yeah, we've definitely been feeling the heat lately, and and I think so have some other folks as well. So they've been sending in some questions, and we'll we're gonna do our darndest to answer those today. So I guess, Ken, let's without further ado, should we just go ahead and kick it off, please?

Ken Johnson: 01:09

Yes. So our first question this week is what to do about crabgrass in lawns?

Chris Enroth: 01:17

That is a great question. I don't know. Next question. Just kidding. Just kidding.

Ken Johnson: 01:23

Embrace it.

Chris Enroth: 01:25

Embrace it. It's grass, isn't it? I I would say crabgrass is is probably a a main offender for a lot of people just because of the texture difference and the kind of the growth habit. Crabgrass grows almost in an opposite way of our turfgrass. So our turfgrass, it grows upright, you know, allows us to mow it.

Chris Enroth: 01:45

Crab grass grows out prostrate or, like, spreading horizontally across the ground. It just doesn't look uniform and and a uniform lawn. If I had a uniform lawn, it might bother me, but it doesn't bother me in my lawn. It is far from uniform. I I I would say there there are a few things you can do.

Chris Enroth: 02:07

So let's talk first culture of the lawn. The if if the crabgrass is more of a horizontal grower and our turf grass is more of a a vertical grower, one of the things we can do is raise our mowing height. Now I don't necessarily mean this is like a temporary mowing height raise. I mean, this is like a season long mowing height raise. So, if you've been cutting your lawn fairly short, like an inch or less, you're actually favoring the growth and development of crabgrass because you're given a nice horizontal space for it to grow over top of your lawn.

Chris Enroth: 02:39

But if you can raise your mowing height to two to three, maybe even three to four inches, that makes your lawn more competitive to crabgrass. Now we are in the middle of the summer, but one of the things that we can use to combat crabgrass is preemergence herbicide. Crabgrass is a summer annual, which means it germinates in the spring. It grows vegetatively all summer long, and then it'll flower. It'll send up this kinda, like, stalk, this flower spike that has these different flower fluorescences coming off of it.

Chris Enroth: 03:16

I bet there's an actual term for this. But I my brain is failing me now. Summer brain. Heat brain got me. And it will set seed.

Chris Enroth: 03:28

It will die once we start getting cold again, and the cycle repeats itself next spring. But if you could put a pre emergence down on your lawn in the spring, that can at least limit a lot of that germination from occurring in the spring. A lot of times people do a second application according to label directions or whatever herbicide you pick. Now we are in the summer. You don't care about preemergence right now.

Chris Enroth: 03:50

You're like, what can I do now other than raising my lawn height and taking care of my lawn in the proper way? You there's probably some folks out there saying, I want to be able to spray something. There is a chemical for you. The active ingredient is quinclorac, which is pretty good at controlling crabgrass in its, you know, adult kinda growth stage from seedling to having kind of a a handful of tillers, just the different stems coming out of that main growing point at the base of the plant, it it does a pretty good job. So you'd be wanting to look for the active ingredient quinclorac, which just like the preemergent, it's every company wants to lump these things together with some other herbicides.

Chris Enroth: 04:39

So for, like, dandelions or fertilizer for your lawn. So just just prepare be prepared for that when you go to the garden center is that you're gonna see, like, a, you know, five and one product, and one of those active ingredients is gonna be quinclorac. If you don't have an irrigated lawn in July in Illinois, you probably don't wanna be putting fertilizer down right now. You wanna wait until we get till about August 15 to September fifth fifteenth for Central Illinois. A little bit earlier if you're in Northern Illinois, a little bit later if you're in Southern Illinois.

Chris Enroth: 05:16

So that's crabgrass for you, Ken.

Ken Johnson: 05:20

Or it's an annual, so keep it from setting seed, it won't be there next year

Chris Enroth: 05:24

in theory. Oh, very good point. And if you can prevent that seed from from forming, it has a really short soil life, crabgrass seed. I think it's, like, three years or something. So preventing flowering is a viable option here for limiting the amount of seed left in your soil.

Chris Enroth: 05:43

Good point, Chris.

Ken Johnson: 05:44

And in a vegetable garden setting, because I just got done doing this for an hour and a half, it pulls fairly easily too. It's not terribly deeply rooted. So when you get a nice big patch of it, it's it's satisfying because it looks like a lot, but it's like three plants.

Chris Enroth: 06:00

I gotta do the same thing, Ken. It's it's all over right now in the mulch beds. I'm just just holding off. I need to go home and do that after this.

Ken Johnson: 06:11

So I know it's I think if you really wanted to get rid of it and you got a big patch, you could spot treat it with a nonselective, and then you'll have to reseed. Yes. You've got a a ginormous patch. It's true. I'd just say embrace it.

Ken Johnson: 06:29

It's green.

Chris Enroth: 06:30

You can mow it. It's green. It's good. Yep. Well, Ken, sticking here with the lawn.

Chris Enroth: 06:38

I boy, I hear this a lot. My lawn is dying. What do I do?

Ken Johnson: 06:46

Yeah. So this one, I usually get it kinda this time of year. We started getting into later into July and August. We're starting to get into the the dog days of summer, so to speak. And I would say vast majority of the lawns, at least in Central And Northern Illinois, we're growing cool season turf, which does not like this hot weather.

Ken Johnson: 07:03

So if you kinda get a a uniform dieback, maybe you're dying back a little more towards, you know, the sidewalk or the driveway where it's even hotter, those areas, It may be just the grass going dormant. It doesn't wanna grow in these really warm temperatures. It'll go dormant. Once it cools off, rains come back, it'll green up. We'll be good to go.

Ken Johnson: 07:25

So I think a lot of times that's the case for most for a lot of people. There are some patch diseases that will show up in the summer. So if you have, rings or circular areas of your lawn dying and you don't have a dog, it could be patch disease. So that can be a lot of times, it's it's stressed areas. You got a lot of thatch or soil.

Ken Johnson: 07:46

So the the grass is stressed, then you get these pathogens moving in, and you can start getting patch diseases showing up. For this, you know, it's it's finding out what's causing that stress and rectifying that issue. You could use an herbicide or not herbicide, a fungicide that's not going to kind of revive that that dead grass, but it can help prevent that from spreading. So active ingredients will be myclobutanol, propiconazole, and thiophanate methyl will be some of the active ingredients. But again, that's that's a protective, it's not a curative.

Ken Johnson: 08:24

So what what's the damage is done is done. You need to figure out what's what's causing that stress, rectify that, and then you can go through and and reseed kind of those patches that have died out. So I would say more often than not, it's just grass is going dormant because it's too hot. Yep.

Chris Enroth: 08:45

And no need to try to water to wake it up. Dormancy is natural for cool season lawns in the summer. Actually, you might stress things out more if you try to wake it up with a little bit of water.

Ken Johnson: 08:56

If you do wake it up, you better keep it awake instead of going back and forth.

Chris Enroth: 09:01

Mhmm. Yeah. One thing we have from Northern Illinois, I I get quite a few questions from up the the collar counties around Chicago is they've been getting chinch bugs, which to me is like more of southern species, but Illinois does have our own resident chinch bugs, which will these, like, teeny tiny little insects that will kinda go after the lawn. And I I think it's like something toxic within their saliva that actually winds up causing that decline in the lawn in the plant itself. But so, yeah, do some scouting.

Chris Enroth: 09:42

There's a lot of things that could be happening right now, including just natural dormancy.

Ken Johnson: 09:47

They left those things behind when I left Florida.

Chris Enroth: 09:51

I know. Yeah. I know. They brought them with you, kid.

Ken Johnson: 09:58

Alright. Let's get away from moths. So our next question here is, what is tearing apart my sassafras tree?

Chris Enroth: 10:07

Well, this was a question I got from an individual, and and and they did send send photographs of it, but I I really wasn't sure. You could definitely tell in the images, like, some large critter had climbed up into this tree and had broken a few branches. And I think the kind of the heart of the question, though, was was what was it? Why? And how can I prevent it from happening?

Chris Enroth: 10:34

And as best as I can tell, I looked at the pictures, there was a lot of Japanese beetle damage. And if I zoomed in, I saw these big black kind of just groups, clusters of Japanese beetles. And so I thought, well, maybe it's some type of mammal, maybe raccoon, it was my guess, that is climbing up in the middle of the night going after these Japanese beetles. They want a a nighttime snack. So whether or they're going after Japanese beetles or not, look like it was a big animal, probably raccoon, I would guess.

Chris Enroth: 11:10

So for for the Japanese beetles, you know, that that that's one side of the the coin we can look at in terms of kind of managing those or controlling them. But because there were so many already, you know, they use these aggregate pheromones to sort of draw in their mates and tell everybody the salad bar is over here. It's it's not too late, but, you know, if if we're just trying to prevent the raccoon from breaking limbs, we're gonna go to the old radio technique that I have recommended a few times on the podcast. So, you you get a radio. You bring it outside.

Chris Enroth: 11:49

You find a talk radio station, and you turn that on, put it near ish where you're getting, raccoons causing mischief, and you put a bucket or a wheelbarrow over that, and you leave it going all night. Tell your neighbors so they don't call the police thinking someone's sneaking around the yards. But for the most part, most of our raccoons, they they can't identify because that it's being covered by some object. They can't identify where those voices are coming from. It's muffled.

Chris Enroth: 12:21

They're not quite sure. And so it it it dissuades them from coming in near where they might have been causing problems. I will say that probably campground raccoons have the opposite effect. I think when they hear human voices, they immediately think of food. I've even had a a campground raccoon come up to a a scout.

Chris Enroth: 12:43

We were at a scouting event and pull the hot dog out of their hand in the middle of an event. So some raccoons might be desensitized to humans' voices, but try the radio technique if you're having problems with raccoons. Try it for a couple nights in a row. See if it works. It it has worked for me several times in the past.

Ken Johnson: 13:08

They noticed any scant on the ground or anything?

Chris Enroth: 13:11

No. That's a good question too. I I should have asked them that. Raccoons usually have a latrine, so they will go in a particular spot. Wherever that spot is, you you know, before they go into their home, they have a little latrine that they use before they go into wherever they're burrowing.

Chris Enroth: 13:27

You know, or maybe before they feed or before they climb, there is a particular spot, we call it the latrine, that they tend to use routinely. So but, no, that's a good question. Alright, Ken. On to the next glorious one about why are my tomatoes cracking? It is the season for cracked tomatoes.

Ken Johnson: 13:51

Yes. This is again usually more of a weather related thing. So if we get a dry spell, tomatoes are growing and all of a sudden we get a bunch of rain, plants take up a bunch of water, they pump that into the fruit, fruit starts expanding, skin of the fruit can expand as fast as it's taking in the water, fruit starts cracking. And I would say more often than that is gonna be the problem. There's other cause.

Ken Johnson: 14:14

And there's different types. You got like the rain check, the small cracks at the top of the fruit, which are pretty common. And if you get a sometimes you get the whole side splitting. Usually, I would say the on the small cracks, those will seal up, heal themselves pretty well. Those are fine to eat.

Ken Johnson: 14:30

But if you're getting, you know, the ones with big cracks, plants the fruit doesn't usually kind of seal that up. You start getting all the sap beetles and stuff moving in there. That's one where you wanna and dispose of those because you don't know what they're bringing in. That's open. You're getting fungus, bacteria, stuff in there.

Ken Johnson: 14:49

So things that could cause some cause you to get sick if you eat it potentially. So, you know, if it's smaller cracks, usually those will heal themselves. Bigger cracks, Get rid of them. You'll have more than more tomatoes than you probably need anyway. So it's okay, Blues.

Ken Johnson: 15:03

True.

Chris Enroth: 15:04

Yeah. Ken, my tomatoes are doing like nothing this year. They're just I I think it's probably I don't have enough light, but I don't know. You're you had any success this year with tomatoes? Got any good ones?

Chris Enroth: 15:18

I don't even have fruit, don't think. So it's and it's almost it is July 21 when we're recording.

Ken Johnson: 15:25

So we didn't plant any tomatoes at home this year. But at our our extension garden, we've got some on the plants. We some plants are fine. Some plants aren't really doing anything. Some plants have eaten by groundhogs.

Ken Johnson: 15:40

But the plants that do have fruit on them, green, some of them are starting to get a little yellow, starting to get a little color changing them. So hopefully, it it will cool off a little bit so we will get some proper coloring in those fruit. I don't have to pick them and ripen them inside.

Chris Enroth: 15:59

Uh-huh. Well, I threw some fertilizer on mine in hopes I could get them going, but that that might be hey. I'll just go support my local farmers at the farmer's market. They got some tasty love apples there, so it's where we'll head for our our fix this year.

Ken Johnson: 16:17

Alright. Our last question here is green June beetles ruin the park concert.

Chris Enroth: 16:27

So this is a question both Ken and I got. Actually, we were together. We were sitting in a conference room in in Denver, Colorado. Came across the email, and this was a a local park here in Macomb. They had they had emailed us both asking, what are these beetles?

Chris Enroth: 16:51

I think they called them Japanese beetles at the time, and, they sent us a video. So Ken and I were sitting next to each other. We watched this video. I guess, Ken, describe the video. Do you remember that video, what we were seeing on there?

Ken Johnson: 17:06

All kinds of and pretty decent it looked like pretty decent sized insects flying kinda low to the ground all over the grass in this park, like swarms of them.

Chris Enroth: 17:17

And so I mean and and like me, Ken, he laid awake all night thinking about what could what was this swarm of insects that was so so bothersome that the concert had to be canceled at this park? And I I really did think about this a lot while we were away for for this work trip, and and this first day I got back into Macomb, went to the park, and I I went and I investigated. And it was not to the density that we saw in the video, but they were still out. These black, big old blips hovering around maybe, like, two to four feet off the ground max and just just buzzing around. And I was able to just snag one out of the air.

Chris Enroth: 18:07

Thankfully, it wasn't a wasp or anything. I opened up my hand, and it was a green June beetle. And I have heard of green June beetles kinda like the Japanese beetles we mentioned before. They do have these aggregation pheromones, but I think theirs is more just like a mating pheromone. Like, they get into these, like, large these these, like, large groups.

Chris Enroth: 18:33

They put out this mating pheromone, and the females, they're down by the grass. She's digging up holes. She's laying her eggs, and the males are the ones that are sort of buzzing around looking to mate with her. And I have heard of these clusters happening, but I've never seen it before. I don't know, Ken.

Chris Enroth: 18:53

Am I you know, is is that something that is common, or, know, what what do we do about all these green June beetles?

Ken Johnson: 19:02

Yeah. I've I've never I've, you know, I've seen them, but I've never seen them, like, in a concentration they were seen in the parks. Yeah. They'll they'll have these pheromones. You'll sometimes even have, like, balling.

Ken Johnson: 19:12

We have a bunch of males going after a single female. So like I said, they're they're laying eggs. And usually, this is in in grass, like, with a lot of organic matter, a lot of thatch, things like that. And that's what the larvae are gonna feed on. So the these are gonna be white grubs in the soil.

Ken Johnson: 19:27

They don't typically cause as much damage as some of the other white grubs, turf like Japanese beetles, things like that. Because they're feeding more on the thatch and inorganic matter. But these are and they can be pretty so the eggs the lay of the eggs, eggs will hatch, I think, usually August time frame. They'll feed and they'll overwinter as kind of mature larvae pupate the following year and adults emerge late June, early July. The cool thing about the grubs though is that they will they crawl on their back.

Ken Johnson: 19:57

So if you see a grub upside down crawling around, it's it's gonna be a green June beetle. They have legs and everything, but they choose not to use them and just somehow crawl around on their back. And and sometimes you see them in like compost piles, you get a lot of organic matter in there. So sometimes you may see them crawling out of that as they go to somewhere to pupate or something like that. And the adults, you know, dream jubilee is also called fig eaters because they will go to fruit.

Ken Johnson: 20:26

You will see a lot of times large clusters of them on fruit, peaches, nectarines, kind of the softer skin stuff. And they can really do a number. If you've got fruit trees, if you've got quite a few of them on that, they'll start chewing on that. I mean, I completely eat the fruit, but they're again, they're causing damage to it, creating these openings where you start getting fungus and bacteria in there that's gonna spoil your fruit crop.

Chris Enroth: 20:52

Now I didn't give really any recommendations for control for the people of this park, but, yeah, I kinda just said it. This is pretty cool. You should enjoy this this display of these, like, these these somewhat large, beautiful, green beetles. They're not gonna hurt anyone. They they can't necessarily bite.

Chris Enroth: 21:14

The even the one I had in my hand, like, you could tell it was trying to get away, but there's nothing it could have done to me. I did see several wasps hovering around too. Now I wasn't gonna grab any of those out of the air, but I didn't have a net with me or anything. So I I did read though that parasitism is is something that can occur here with the green June beetle. And so not only are the males sort of hovering around looking for the females, so are the wasps that will parasitize the the larvae here.

Chris Enroth: 21:49

And and so I I don't know. Can't confirm, but there was also a lot of wasps sort of buzzing around along with the males that I saw.

Ken Johnson: 22:01

It is your nondominant hand to catch them bare handed.

Chris Enroth: 22:05

There you go. I can hey. I can even compare if the pain I feel is is right on the scale, the pain scale, the sting scale.

Ken Johnson: 22:14

The Schmidt pain index. Yes. Or he can contribute to it if he hasn't done it yet.

Chris Enroth: 22:19

And Oh, that's true.

Ken Johnson: 22:20

Didn't do it. So

Chris Enroth: 22:22

That's true. We could we could identify. We'll key out this particular wasp, and then I can tell you how bad it hurts when it stings you. But but, Ken, is there any I mean, is there any is it worthwhile making any controls in in a situation like this? I mean, I I said you probably get some turf damage.

Chris Enroth: 22:40

Some people might be freaked out by the grubs crawling upside down on sidewalks when it rains a lot. Other than that, just enjoy it.

Ken Johnson: 22:49

Yeah. I think in the lawn, other than, you know, making it less attractive to them, I don't think there's really anything you could spray, especially, you know, the numbers that were there. I don't think it'd be all that practical. You know, with fruits, that may be something you want to spray for if you want to get a fruit drop, you know, peaches, nectarines, I think even grapes. And so I think it's looking at apples.

Ken Johnson: 23:12

We usually see them more on the soft fruited stuff first. So maybe applying an insecticide like a multipurpose fruit spray that's got an insecticide on there. Think malathion, acetomiprid would be too. Could use, think neem is more of a repellent. So that that may be something.

Ken Johnson: 23:30

If you have fruit trees or you have raspberries, blackberries, something like that, and they're getting on there, that may warrant spraying. But if it's just in the turf, yeah, probably finding something more to to make it less attractive to them.

Chris Enroth: 23:47

Yeah. Yeah. So protect your with the adults from eating some of your tree fruits, but yeah. And then set a public park, which complicates it even more. It's it's heavily used.

Chris Enroth: 23:58

I mean, it would be I don't I don't even know if they spray lawns at pub in public parks, public parks in most Illinois towns anymore. So yeah.

Ken Johnson: 24:10

Yeah. Yeah. If you did, you'd have to keep people off and Yeah. Give notice and all that stuff. So

Chris Enroth: 24:15

Yeah. Too much work. Just enjoy and let the kids go catch a couple. Yeah.

Ken Johnson: 24:21

Yeah. Start an insect collection.

Chris Enroth: 24:23

There you go. There you go. Oh. Well, that was a lot of great information about some summertime questions that have come across our desk while we have been away gallivanting around the mountains. Well, the Good Growing podcast production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by Ken Johnson.

Chris Enroth: 24:42

Hey, Thanks for hauling everybody back. You know, we we brought the train back and we're back at it, back at the grindstone now. So here we go.

Ken Johnson: 24:53

It's it's good to be back closer to sea level. Mhmm. Not I didn't miss the humidity, but I'll I'll take the the less thin air, definitely. So

Chris Enroth: 25:04

Yeah. I I don't like not being able to breathe as well when I'm hiking up and down trails. So But again, the humidity also doesn't help.

Ken Johnson: 25:14

Take your poison. Exactly. And let's do this again next week.

Chris Enroth: 25:21

Oh, we shall do this again next week. We are going to be talking about rain gardens. It's gonna be a great storm water tool. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more in many of our communities here in Flatland, Illinois. It's it can be it can be a big asset for us here.

Chris Enroth: 25:37

So we will chat about that next week. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening or if you watched us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.