Gardeners Checklist: Here Is What to Do on the Week of August 1

By Ron Kujawski

• Make one last sowing of beets, bush beans, carrots, collards, kohlrabi, and rapini (broccoli raab). If you have leftover onion sets, plant these too, if only to use as scallions or green onions. As a challenge, plant some peas for fall harvest.

• Prune out the old canes from raspberry plants and thin the new canes, leaving three or four canes per linear foot of row.

• Carefully inspect the leaves of plants that suddenly appear pale or yellow. Look for stippling on the leaves, a sign that spider mites are actively feeding. Use a magnifying glass to find the tiny mites on the undersides of leaves. The two-spotted spider mite is most active during hot weather. Applications of insecticidal soap can reduce spider mite populations but read and follow label directions on the product used.

• Be extra careful when applying pesticides, organic or non-organic, to plants in hot weather since many of these can injure plants. During hot weather, apply pesticides in the evening hours when temperatures drop below 85 degrees F.

• Evaluate your home grounds now and decide if the addition of spring flowering bulbs would enhance the spring landscape. Planting season for spring flowering bulbs is still a few months away, but bulb catalogs have been arriving almost daily. Even if you buy bulbs locally, the catalogs are useful references for making decisions on bulb purchases.

• Don’t be alarmed by the appearance of large, shiny, black spots on leaves of red, silver, and Norway maples. Because the spots look much like tar the common name given to this fungus-caused disease is tar spot. Though the infections occurred earlier in summer, they are only now becoming apparent. The damage is mostly cosmetic. Fungicide applications are not warranted. However, do rake up and destroy maple leaves this fall.

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I have some timely advice for sun-worshipers. Eat your tomatoes.  

Most of the health benefits of tomatoes are well-known: they are high in vitamins (especially C, A, and K) and in cancer-preventing anti-oxidants. If that’s not enough to make tomatoes a mainstay of your diet, researchers at two British universities found that tomatoes can protect skin from damaging UV rays of the sun. Fortunately, you don’t have to rub tomato paste over your body to achieve sunscreen benefits. The test group in this study was fed five tablespoons of tomato paste every day for three months. Compared to the control group, these folks had 33 percent more protection from UV rays. Let’s hear it for the tomato!

Ron Kujawski began gardening at an early age on his family's onion farm in upstate New York. Although now retired, he spent most of his career teaching at the UMass Extension Service. He serves on Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Horticulture Advisory Committee. His book, Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook, is available here.