Cornell in the community: Patty plant questions

Friends of Lorenzo, the Stone Quarry Art Park, the Key at St. Peter’s Church, and the Refugee Resettlement program. One of her favorite activities was as chair of Cazenovia’s Winter Festival.

Bobsie remained very close to her two older sisters and their families her entire life. All three sisters lived into their late 90s, and spent time every year vacationing together at the Bradshaw family farm in Mariaville , N.Y. She also loved spending time on the beach at Cape Cod with her family and close friends.

Bobsie is survived by her children, Margaret Evans Lane of Cazenovia, Bradshaw Allen Evans (Shawna) of Barrington, RI. Her eldest son, James Frederick Evans III (Mary) of Cazenovia, died a year after his mother in 2023. She is also survived by her grandchildren, Elizabeth Lane (Richard Fraschilla); Emily Lane-Meija (Piero); Christopher Lane, Samantha Evans and Bradshaw Evans; and two great grandchildren, Lucie Charlotte Mejia and Madeline Evans Fraschilla. A service in memory of Bobsie will be held at 1 p.m. July 22, 2023, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 10 Mill Street in Cazenovia.

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SUBmittED By PAtty StimmEl horticulturiSt ag & garden educator

What plant or gardening question is on your mind these days? Bugs eating your cabbages? Flowers failing to flourish? Every growing season is a little different isn’t it? This year, our weather went from cold and dreary to hot and sultry almost overnight. But did you plant your tomatoes too soon? Most of us couldn’t get them in the ground until at least June 1 due to the cold night temperatures that held on well into late May. Once we got over that whacky weather hurdle, we hit a dry spell that had many of us gardeners wondering if our wells would run dry by July. Thankfully they didn’t but these weather extremes have many people puzzling over what they’re starting to see in their gardens.

Insect pests need certain conditions to be met before they can emerge from whichever morphological state they stay in to overwinter. A slow start to spring weather followed by a sudden warm-up can mean an eruption of pests such as sawfly. Sawfly are the clever little larvae of the adult sawfly; an often unnoticed nonstinging wasp-like insect.

The larvae are often the exact color of the leaves on which they feed. When they appear, it’s seemingly out of nowhere and in bulk quantities. You will notice the damage they do way before you notice them. Since they often occur in such large quantities at once, they can strip a shrub in its early spring growth stages rather quickly. Look for sawfly on spruce, alder, azalea, viburnum, elderberry, currant, willow, dogwood, columbine and more.

The best defense against sawfly larvae is a good offense. Check your plants regularly in the spring and look for damage, then look again for these tiny critters. They can be quite small when they first start (1/8 of an inch) but tiny as they are, they will grow to about an inch long over their 4 to 6 week feeding period as they feed voraciously on the leaves of your plants. Sawfly larvae are not difficult to get rid of once spotted. If they see you coming, they may rise up on their prolegs and take a dive off your plant and onto the ground, at which point you can squash them. You can also place a bucket or other wide-mouthed container or even a tarp under your plant and tap the branches. The larvae will often fall off and you can dispose of them easily. Small infestations can just be picked off and put into a jar of soapy water or rubbing alcohol. The alcohol will kill them quickly whereas the soapy water will kill them gradually. We also get a lot of ‘what’s wrong with my plant?’ type questions on our helpline. Many of us had to hold off on planting our tomatoes this year because of the cold spring. Plants that become root bound (their roots fill the pot so densely they dry out very fast) will undergo a lot more transplant stress once they are finally planted. And just as we are more likely to get sick when we are stressed, so are plants. Damping off (a softening and rotting of the stem tissues just above the soil line caused by Rhizoctonia, Fusarium or Pythium fungus) typically happens during damp weather coupled with cool temperatures while plants are young. Some plants, tomatoes in particular, can continue to grow through the damage caused by damping off until they become top heavy, and the damaged base of the main stem gives way. Happy looking tomatoes one day can flop over, wilt and die the next, even if they are nearly full grown.

Diagnosing plant problems is an entire section in the Master Gardener Volunteer training manual.

There are Master Gardener Volunteers at the ready every Tuesday from 11 to 1 p.m. and some Thursdays 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Call them at 315-684-3001 ext. 119 and leave a message with your question or email them at ccemadisonmgv@gmail. com. And finally, every Friday Patty Stimmel, horticulturist and ag & garden educator at CCE Madison will go through hot helpline topics on her podcast: Fridays

With Patty. In this quick, five minute listen, Patty reviews hot helpline topics for the week and weighs in with some answers of her own. Search for Fridays With Patty under Spotify’s Podcasts & Shows. Patty Stimmel is a horticulturist and the ag & garden educator for CCE Madison. She runs the Seed to Supper and the Master Gardener Volunteer programs and can be reached at 315-684-3001 ext. 108 or emailed at patriciamae@cornell.edu