The time has come to put yet another workweek behind us. Rain has been the The Nearly Constant Gardening watchword this week. Appropriately, our Friday, End-of-the-Week Blogging-Wrap-up Musical Interlude, which meets the stringent conditions I previously set forth (1. I thought of the song, 2. I found a decent video of the song), not only mentions "rain," it also has "rain" in the title:
I'm pretty sure the question is rhetorical so please don't email me your answer.
There have been some periodic breaks in the weather where everybody's favorite blogger (me, obviously) surveyed the state of things outdoors, but since everything is such a soggy mess, very little gardening has been accomplished. Everybody is probably aware of the benefits of rain. Because I enjoy complaining, I will use this time to point out a problem caused by rain.
Actually, the problem isn't caused by rain, exactly. It's more of a case where wet weather exacerbates an existing problem. The problem is powdery mildew, and, yes, it looks as nasty as it sounds (I apologize now for the overwhelming grossness of these pictures).
Powdery mildew looks like it could be removed with feather duster, it can't be |
It starts off looking like this branch of my crepe myrtle. The leaves shrivel up and look dusty. Every spring and summer a few of the branches on this crepe myrtle are afflicted, and this was about as bad as I've seen it get. Until now.
The late stages of powdery mildew infection |
This year with such mild, wet winter followed by a warm, wet spring the powdery mildew has really taken off. Entire branches like the one pictured are shriveling up and dying completely. Fortunately, the crepe myrtle is old and huge so there are plenty of branches where that one came from (and I, frankly, wouldn't be sad to see the entire plant go away). It was probably planted when the house was built 50 years ago. Unfortunately, that means it's susceptible to powdery mildew. Modern strains of crepe myrtle (and most other plant species that are potentially susceptible) are resistant to powdery mildew. Planting resistant plants is the only way to prevent or control it because, once a plant is infected, it will always have a few gross shriveled branches in the spring and summer.
It's probably bad juju to complain about the rain, especially considering last year's summer drought that killed every plant in central Texas. So, we can all look forward to next week when we'll have had the benefit of the rain without it actually raining. In the spirit of this hopeful outlook, here is one of my vegetable garden beds. We refer to it as "the far bed" because it is geographically the furthest from our backdoor (by a good 2 feet).
The far bed with Patrick's head and butt in the background |
This year it has peppers and an eggplant. Since I planted them a few weeks ago, they've just been sitting back, not growing much. I've mentioned before that they are happy about the rain. After all this rain, they're growing and flowering and even starting to fruit.
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