How’s Your Garden?

BY LOIS TRIGG CHAPLIN

Most gardeners cringe at the presence of stink bugs because they can be so damaging to our tomatoes. Their long needle-like mouthparts puncture tomatoes leaving pin marks and discolored patches, or cause deformed tissue where they feed on beans and other crops. However, a few stink bugs are good guys. They don’t feed on plants, but instead eat harmful caterpillars and other insects that damage our crops. Both the adults and the young of predacious stinkbugs will feed on insects larger than themselves. How can you tell a good stink bug from a bad one? If you aren’t squeamish about picking one up, the easiest way is to check the beak, or long mouthpart that is tucked under the belly of the insect’s body just like a folding table leg. On plant feeding stinkbugs it is thin, but on predacious ones it is stout -- usually about twice the thickness of the insect’s antennae. They use the stout proboscis to pierce and suck fluids from the bodies of their prey. Sounds like inspiration for a sci-fi movie scene. Predatory stinkbugs include the spined soldier bug (Podisus maculiventris), the two-spotted stink bug (Perillus bioculatus), the Florida predatory stink bug (Euthyrhynchus floridanus), the anchor stinkbug (Stiretrus anchorago), and others. The stout mouthpart is a sure identification, but get images to recognize them by sight by searching “predatory stinkbugs” online.

Looking for an elegant plant for a summer container? Consider Tibouchina (Tibouchina urvilleana). Also known as Princess Flower and Purple Glory Bower, this tropical tree is elegant, long-blooming and showy in a pot. It quickly fills a container with velvety leaves and big, single purple flowers that appear throughout summer. In frost-free South Florida it is a small landscape tree, but will live in a pot for years if kept wintered indoors or in a greenhouse. Plants are relatively forgiving about water, too, tolerating soil that is on the dry side if you should miss a watering. Tibouchina needs sun for good flowering, but appreciates some afternoon shade in high summer. Plants will grow 3 to 5 feet tall depending on the size of the pot.

Hanging baskets of black-eyed Susan vine offer promise not just as baskets, but also on a trellis. Often this vining plant is sold in baskets in the summer, which are beautiful in themselves, but they can be hard to keep watered. By gently removing them from the basket into a larger container with a trellis, the vines will have room to grow. The same goes for transplanting them into the ground to climb a fence or trellis. By fall the fast-growing, twining vine will grow to 6 feet long or longer and full of flowers in full sun. Flowers come in shades of yellow, orange, red, or pink depending on the variety. The plants often reseed freely, so watch for seedlings next spring.

Black-eyed Susan vine

The Lake Lure Flowering Bridge is a lovely planting on an old highway bridge in Lake Lure, North Carolina (near Chimney Rock). Instead of tearing the bridge down, the old bridge was transformed into a fanciful pedestrian garden walk that attracts several thousand visitors each year. Maintained by local volunteers, it showcases many flowering shrubs and perennials, garden ornaments, pollinator and butterfly plants, and murals. The garden is also a stop along the Appalachian Mural Trail which includes more than 130 outdoor murals in North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee showcasing art with Appalachian themes. Any gardeners headed to the Chimney Rock area this summer will enjoy a stroll along this flowering garden walk.

Unless okra pods are freshly picked for a farmers market, clean, flawless ones can be hard to find. Often the pods are skinned or bruised by the time they are picked, shipped and marketed. But there is time to plant seeds or transplants for flawless pods at home as okra responds to hot weather with fast growth. Check your Co-op store for Bonnie transplants. Plants started from seeds or transplants through the end of June will yield a harvest later this summer and into the cool nights of fall. To speed germination of the sometimes-stubborn seeds, I rub my okra seeds between two sheets of sandpaper to help scarify the hard seed coat; then I soak the seeds for a day or two before planting, making sure to change the water at least once. Okra seeds don’t need light to germinate, so it’s okay to plant an inch or so deep to help them stay moist in the heat. Keep the seed bed watered and they will sprout in a few days in the warm soil.