Brecksville's Handy Homeowner: Gardening Woes

The middle of summer is here already, but my garden doesn’t seem to know it yet. My basil should be knee-high, but it looks like I put the seeds in a week ago. My tomatoes were trimmed down by a deer, despite my having written a . And my rose bush has been etched into lace by some invisible rose-eating pest.

I turned to Charles Owen for some general gardening advice. He has been the City Horticulturist and Arborist with Brecksville's  for more than 11 years. We talked about some of the challenges that Brecksville’s gardeners are facing this year.

Owen said that the biggest challenge to Brecksville gardeners has always been deer.

“But the one of the biggest challenges this year has been the wet weather. It’s been so wet, for so long. It’s very important not to plant anything when the soil is very wet,” Owen said. He explained that the plants take air from the soil and when we work in wet soil, we compact it and squeeze all of the air out. He said that it sounds like I probably planted my basil seeds when the soil had too much water in it.

I asked Owen about my rose bush and he said that it sounds like I might have a very common pest called the rose slug. He said that they’re easy to kill with pesticides, but if you don’t want to use chemicals, there is another way. The rose slug is nocturnal, so he recommended that when night falls, I sit in a chair by the rose bush and wait for the pests to appear. Then, I could simply pick them off the bush and drop them in a bucket of soapy water.

Owen’s general advice for gardeners in Brecksville is to have your soil tested. He said the best time to have it tested is before you get your garden established, but that some gardeners begin to have problems in their garden after several successful years because of undetected nutrient imbalances in the soil.

You can find information on getting your soil tested through the Ohio State University Extension Office or through the Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District.

If you have a gardening problem that you need help with, you can submit questions through the “Ask the Gardener” link on the city’s website.

I think I’ve given up on making any pesto from my basil this year and I’m not sure that I have the patience to pick slugs off of my rose bush. But hopefully I’ll get a tomato or two before the first frost, which will be here way too soon.