Regular scouting is a great gardening habit to develop | Feature Columnist
We are now well into the summer vegetable gardening season, and that means we should be in a regular habit of disease and insect monitoring.
Regular monitoring and observation of your garden can be the biggest life saver when it comes to having wonderful veggies all summer. Your entire garden could be taken out in a matter of a few days if pests had their way. Catching diseases and signs of insects early is important to prevent loss of garden yield.
I recognize “monitoring” and “observation” could be daunting words when it comes to your garden. You may think to yourself “I don’t have the technical/scientific know how to even know what to look for.”
All monitoring your garden really means is taking a close look at your vegetable plants every couple of days. Look for anything out of the ordinary like discoloration, wilting, holes or spots on leaves, or insects themselves. Even if you don’t have a “green thumb” with a little bit of practice, you will know when you see something out of the ordinary. If you monitor every couple of days you will have a better chance of catching any disease or insect issue.
Not every problem you find in your garden is a disease or insect issue, though. Nutrient deficiencies, and other abiotic factors like excessive rain, or lack of rain, cold, heat, or sun scald can also be killers for your garden. Though some of these factors you have no control over, there are ways to protect your garden or treat problems. The important thing is identification of the issues ASAP.
What is a summer garden without tomatoes, squash or cucumbers? Unfortunately, for us, these vegetables tend to have a few issues to be addressed throughout the growing season. If you have tomatoes in your garden some common things you may see could be aphids, blossom end rot, fruit cracking, and various kinds of wilts. Problems you may see with squash include: squash bugs, squash vine borers, powdery mildew, and poor pollination. Cucumbers have their fair share of common issues as well. Some things you may see are angular leaf spot, powdery mildew, cucumber beetle, and aphids.
Though these are not the only issues you could possibly face in your garden these serve as a great jumping off point for you to troubleshoot issues in your garden. Proper identification of plant problems is the best course of action for proper treatment, because improper use of chemicals weakens the chemistry and efficacy of the chemicals. Additionally, it is important to remember that sometimes the solution to your problem in the garden is removing the plant all together.
Scouting for problems and catching them early will help you to keep your garden healthy and producing longer. If you have an issue you can’t identify, contact your local Cooperative Extension office for identification and treatment suggestions.
Grace Manzer Atkins is a horticulture agent with the Pasquotank Cooperative Extension Service.
