The Garden Thread - September, 2025

September 1, 2025 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Diana in Wisconsin]

The MONTHLY Gardening Thread is a gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.

If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located.

This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked.

It is impossible to hijack the Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table Recipes, Preserving, Good Living - there is no telling where it will go - and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us! Send a Private Message to Diana in Wisconsin if you'd like to be added to/removed from our New & Improved Ping List.

NOTE: This is a once a MONTH Ping List, but we DO post to the thread all throughout the month. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest to Gardeners are welcomed any time.

[Paul R.]

All I do (to avoid You Tube ads) is use Brave Browser. :-)

It usually eats less RAM than Chrome or Edge, too.

[Paul R.]

NWS is now giving us a 20% chance of showers & t-storms this evening, but, the amount of rain predicted is 0.02”, so, that’s not much help. Thursday and beyond looks cooler and wetter, and after today (high 96° F), we look to be in the 92-93° range until Thursday, with a bit lower humidity and cooler nights (under 65° F) creeping in by Tuesday, which is definitely better than the string of 96-97° F days forecast last Friday. Hopefully all these green tomatoes on the vines now will either ripen or continue growing.

I do have one large pot freed up — the Cherry Falls tomato plant that puked out. The other 2 Cherry Falls are doing “ok” to “well”, the rest died in all the sogginess in June. (Those are / were all in the ground.)

The Serrano and Cowhorn peppers (they are in pots) I’d moved to “more sun” started looking peeked, so I’ve moved them back to “mostly shade”. Their brothers and sisters I never moved are doing well — in mostly shade. Go figure.

The only things I have in even close to full sun, that are doing well this year, are a couple Cannas*, and grass and weeds.

The Cannas have not flowered yet, though. What the heck? They were put in the ground, with fresh Miracle Grow Garden Soil, early in June. At that point the bulbs had already sprouted a few inches “in the bag” so to speak. Plus I’ve fed them a little Super Phosphate for about a month now.

[Qiviut]

I use Brave. I also use Blogtrottr to get videos I have subscribed to & the videos are sent by email so they have ads.

[Paul R.]

That’s interesting. Almost all the vids I watch on YT are ones I look up myself, or are suggested by friends or FRiends. So, I’ve not run in to that (ads somehow inserted by, apparently, a 3rd party.)

I’ll mention this to my wife, as she’s addicted to Korean movies, some are on YT, and sometimes I hear ads when she is playing those.

Thanks.

P.S. I have no idea why, but for some reason this is making me remember Rush Limbaugh and “Spatula City” !

[Paul R.]

Drat! NWS has kicked the forecast temps and dewpoints up a bit, and, we are on the way to 98° F this afternoon...

I’d better go check the garden here shortly. It was in good shape then and with a chance of showers, I only watered the most vulnerable plants...

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Other than Garden Centers - if you can’t ship it to my door, I don’t need it, LOL! ;)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Growing peppers can be tricky. They like HEAT, but usually not blazing full sun. Many pepper fruits get ‘sun scald’ for just that reason, unless you make sure that the variety you’re growing has a lot of ‘leaf cover’ to protect the fruits.

You’re doing it right!

Speaking of Peppers - I made Pepper Steak for supper tonight. In my long career of making Pepper Steak, this is either the BEST BATCH EVER - or I’m really hungry today, LOL!

[TheConservativeParty]

😄

[FamiliarFace]

Tomorrow is a big day. The young entrepreneur we hired to do our meditation garden flagstone pathway is starting our project tomorrow!! Hurray!

The price is considerably lower than our first quote. About 1/4 to 1/5 the price of the first contractor. Thank you, Jesus!

While this kid is young, a local master gardener who has his own business is his mentor. This man writes a column for our county newspaper and, in a stroke of luck for us, goes to church with us. It took me a while to put two and two together on who he was, and what he did for a living.

Anyway, the master gardener is ready to retire. He can’t do the heavy lifting anymore. He’s developed back problems and arthritis. So the young man with his team does the heavy work, and we luck out on getting the brains and the brawn at a reasonable price!

We’re also getting a bonus. The Master Gardener landscaper was able to find me several Turtlehead Chelone plants. I had been looking for them all summer after discovering them on a weekend visit to Jeffersonville, IN (which is the Indiana side of the Ohio River and Louisville). Nobody had them in stock. That’s our friend’s specialty though, finding hard to find plants.

This is what they look like, though the ones he brought are more purple than pink, which I think is very pretty. https://www.monrovia.com/hot-lips-turtlehead.html

[Qiviut]

Turtleheads - I love them! I had a 2 mile section of AT that I maintained for years & the end of my section was at a creek where Turtleheads grew. When you have a section for a long time, you get very familiar with the wild flowers & where they grow, certain trees (especially the big, very old ones), & where you are likely to see certain animals or birds.

The Turtleheads were one of those special flowers for me, also Monkshood, Turk’s Cap Lily, & Trilliums.

Your meditation garden should be a very special place.

[FamiliarFace]

I hope these will do well. I ordered 3 for me and two for my friend in Ohio. We were together when we came across them, and fell in love. When the landscaper told me he found some for me, I reached out to my friend to see if she wanted any. She was so excited! He brought them to me Monday or Tuesday last week, and I delivered two for her on Saturday.

We only had time for a quick 30 minute visit, but it was a great 30 minutes. She and I are two peas in a pod. Like sisters from different mothers. Both of us are into gardening, crafts, sewing, cooking, and now…grandchildren. We didn’t know each other super well before we moved to Indiana, but we are closer now than we ever thought possible. If we do ever move back to Ohio (unlikely), we would probably move near them. Funny how that works out.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Blue pumpkins! Thanks Diana! (Need a bigger garden unfortunately!)

[MomwithHope]

When I read “Turtleheads - I love them! “ I thought - this can’t mean its a recipe post. LOL I had never heard of turtleheads flowers had to look them up. I have seen them before.
I finished mowing down the garden with my electric weedwhacker. Took two days but its done. I did that last year too as opposed to dragging plant skeletons to the compost and weeding. The leave here are starting to turn and fall chores are just beginning. My 5 big patio pots still have peppers and tomatoes and my new lettuce and radishes are doing great. It wasn’t much of a garden this year but I can look back and chalk a lot of it up to the hot hot summer. Tons of hummingbirds now and they stop here heading south. Thanks to all for your posts thus summer. They have kept me going.

[Paul R.]

Thanks! — The Cowhorn and Serrano pepper plants I mentioned (moved back to shade) mostly recovered in ~36 hours, not too long after my post about them - remarkable to me. (The damage wasn’t a matter of wilting, the leaves just sort of looked like they were beginning to scald / “burn”. There are only a couple small fruits on them, and those look ok.

Anyway, lesson learned: South of Cape Girardeau, or maybe St. Louis, the recommendations of “full sun for 6-8 hours” are not necessarily correct for many plants. I suspect sun angle. Many sources state there is a loss in production with less than those 6-8 hours of sun, but maybe that’s more likely when the sun angle is low? In any event, since I have few “full sun for 6-8 hours” locations, this works out ok for me. :-)

[Qiviut]

The leaves are turning here, too. Mom & I were out & about yesterday after church - went to a local orchard for apples. We have to cross a mountain ridge & at the higher elevations, the fall foliage was even more advanced.

It’s early apple season - all they had were red & golden delicious (I want winesap - which means another trip, probably in October). We bought a bag with 20 - 25 apples. I made mom an apple cobbler instead of a birthday cake & she thoroughly enjoyed it.

Leaves are falling in the yard. Last year, I chopped them up with the mower & plan to do the same this year - no raking for me!

After Saturday, I now have 6 batches of red jalapeños ready to go for pepper jelly. Each batch is 6 jars so I will have plenty to give away - 12 jars are already spoken for.

1 of my 3 days of travel this week has been canceled .... after Wednesday, I will have to buckle down & plant my 11 bushes/plants that are still in pots, haul a load of mulch & one of gravel. I need to clean the zinnia beds, but I’m letting the birds pick the spent blooms clean - I already have cut the blooms I like best & saved the seeds.

I did not get hummingbird feeders out this year, but I did see a few checking out the flowers so I know they are around our new place. I love those little guys, miss the ones I fed at our old place & I feel bad that when they came last spring looking for feeders, there were none, but my SIL next door had feeders out so they had a place to go.

I am very glad you did some gardening this summer - it’s therapeutic in many ways & the garden thread posters are “good folks”.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Or, just buy local! Someone should have them; they’re all the rage these days. ;)

I’m not growing any pumpkins this season. Not sure what Beau has growing in the lower garden - winter squashes of some kind, I think?

[Paul R.]

WELL! Quite a bit more areal coverage than what I’d expect from a “20% chance” of scattered precip moved through yesterday evening. The storms didn’t die off after sunset as predicted, either - they just pushed southeast. The last batch that went through here was still going, a bit diminished, down near Memphis, an hour ago. Rain amounts were generally modest - I think we got more than most people did, with almost 1/2”. But, that’s a lot better than the predicted 0.02”!

T-storm winds, at least for a time, came out of the Northeast, surprising me by carrying rain to soak everything under our large NE facing porch awning. That almost never happens - and I had to hurriedly drag a couple things inside. Wifey was freaking out a bit: Lots of hickory nuts and numerous small branches got knocked down: “It sounds like a war zone outside” she blurted out. We have lots of leaves and pieces of leaves, most green, down too. Empty buckets and such got knocked over and / or tossed around. But, damage, including in the garden areas and elsewhere, is minimal, so, that’s a blessing.

Still, at least 4 counties in our area got stronger storms than we did. IIRC, one of the power outages was 1600+ people - fairly substantial in a mostly rural area.

[MomwithHope]

With the cooler weather coming I have a prayer shawl ready to use. God gives us all we need. Happy belated birthday to your Mom! The honeycrisp apples are in now in Michigan. They have become plentiful and cheaper. Every every year for as far back as I can remember the hummingbirds at least a couple of them buzz the patio doors up and down as if saying thanks and goodbye. They are all gone after that.

[Paul R.]

I don’t do a lot of product shout outs, but, I’ve used “Sontax Aluminum Foil Tape” in two emergency repairs and two more permanent uses, recently. I’d picked up a couple of the 2” x 50 yard rolls on clearance @ Menards, some time back. It’s generally used for HVAC applications - think “metallic dust tape”.

This is really good stuff for certain uses: The adhesive is super aggressive, yet the tape CAN be peeled back off most smooth surfaces. The temperature rating is -40° to 248° F, and as long as you don’t start a tear, this tape is quite strong. It does have no stretch - very useful sometimes, but a problem in others.

I’ve not tried it, but I’ll bet this makes a good “sealer” for the tips of partially used caulking gun tubes, too.

[Liz]

GARDENER'S ASPARAGUS CROQUETTES w/ TRUFFLE MAYO
Something tasty to use up all those asparagus stalks.

Ing 1 bunch steamed asparagus stalks 1 1/2 c bread crumbs 1/4 c wheat germ
2 eggs 1 tsp chp chives (or use chp small onion) sea salt/p, to taste 1 tbl grated cheese

Method Chop asparagus stalks coarsely and add combined bread crumbs/wheat germ, beaten eggs and seasonings. Set about an hour; crumbs will swell and the flavors will meld. Form into small cakes and roll in combined crumbs/wheat germ. Fry golden in vegetable oil, or bake in greased baker 425°F until brown, turning once. Serve with Truffle Mayo---add truffle oil to mayo.