Dayton "Dirt" - July 29, 2011

The weather, although a bit on the hot side, has been ideal for growing because of enough timely rain and warm nights.

I’ve noticed in the farmer’s fields that the soybeans and field corn seem to be making up for some of the lost time from the cold wet spring.

The nutsedge and crabgrass seems to be abundant in lawns with the ample moisture. The Ortho company does offer a crabgrass and nut grass or nutsedge killer that works as a post emergent to kill the unwanted invaders.

Spider mites are going to town with the extreme heat which they love. Unfortunately, some customers are coming into the nursery are using carbaryl or Sevin as an all purpose spray . Sevin will actually cause spider mite populations to explode as the mite’s predators are killed of with no effect on the mites themselves.

A control for mites is a drench or a spray of Bayer’s Tree & Shrub Insect Control which contains a miticide.

Lawn diseases are popping up too which include dollar spot, brown patch or rhyzoctonia and more rarely pythium which rots the crown of the grass. Almost all lawn diseases can be controlled by a broad spectrum fungicide by Bayer. However, pythium is a special case and can be controlled by a sprench with Agri-Fos which is mono and di-potassium salts of phosphorus acid.

In the Owl Barn market more and more produce is becoming available. I just picked 5 bushels of tomatoes from our early patch planted on April 28th. The early sweet corn ‘Ambrosia’ is still “in” while my favorite bicolor, ‘Temptation’ is not far behind.

Construction on our new perennial plant production house starts in two weeks and will be finished about Thanksgiving which right now doesn’t seem so far away.

Tom