As I was considering my posts for the week, I thought about what I’d said in yesterday’s post about how the weather had affected my plants. Here in my part of Connecticut we’ve had very little rain all summer and we’ve had a much hotter summer than normal. While this has, for the most part, been good for the tomatoes so long as they’ve gotten supplemental irrigation, it has not been good for the landscape overall and a lot of gardens–as well as trees, shrubs and evergreens–are starting to show some major drought stress.
I know a good portion of the country has been experiencing the same weather–and those that haven’t in some cases have been having crippling flooding.
So with all of this going on, I thought I’d try to post this week about some general organic ideas for the garden and lawn to help them recover from what they may be experiencing.
If it’s too hot or too wet to garden where you are, get to a library or bookstore and get your hands on a copy of this. This is an eye-opening book by a professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota.
I saw a “tweet” come across this week from someone claiming that lime-sulphur was a great organic remedy for fungus, for example. A little bell went off in my head because I thought I remembered something bad about lime sulphur as an organic remedy. So I came home and pulled out my handy-dandy book, and sure enough, right there on pages 136-137, it talks about how lime-sulphur isn’t commonly used anymore because it has a high degree of photo-toxicity and it should never be used when temperatures are above 80 degrees. So anyone just blindly taking that “tweet-er’s” advice now has some badly burned plants covered with fungus, I’ll bet.
I hope all of you are doing your homework anytime anyone claims that something is the latest and greatest in organic remedies. There’s just too much misinformation about organics out there to not do some research yourself. And this is why this book is invaluable–why wouldn’t you trust a horticulture professor?
This book is organized into chapters on weed control, insect control, disease control, pest control and even has chapters on organic food. It’s well-written, a quick read, and a great reference. I wouldn’t be without it for my garden and my organic questions.
