It’s officially summertime. The solstice came and went. We’re tending our gardens, nurturing our vegetables and flowers. We all look forward to an abundant harvest of fantastic, home-grown, organic vegetables.

 Along the way we might run into beetles. Some beetles, like ladybugs (aka lady beetles), are good partners. Beneficial insects such as these help you achieve your goals by eating insects that damage to your plants. Other beetles damage your plants:

Japanese beetles. They’re busy eating holes in these leaves (well, they’re busy doing other things as well) and can seriously damage a very wide range of garden plants. These beetles only occur east of the Mississippi. The ones shown are the adults. Their babies (whitish grubs with brown heads that curl into a “C” shape) live in the soil and eat plant roots. You can hand pick the adults and knock them off the plants into a can of soapy water. Beneficial nematodes that also live in the soil attack and kill a wide variety of soil dwelling insects, including the larvae of Japanese beetles.

Colorado potato beetles. The adult is on the left and a baby (larva) on the right. The adults and larvae have voracious appetites for numerous garden plants and can be quite destructive. The soapy water trick works on adults and larvae alike. Bt san diego (Bacillus thuringiensis var. san diego), a parasitic bacterium that infects and kills beetles and only beetles, provides excellent control. Be careful to get the variety san diego for beetles. The more common variety of Bt is var. kurstaki which only kills caterpillars and will have no effect at all on your beetles.

Flea beetles. So called because they are very tiny and hop like fleas. These insects are too small to hand pick. They chew lots of small roundish holes in leaves and can make eggplant leaves look like lace. Their larvae live in the soil and eat plant roots. Thus beneficial nematodes make a good remedy for these beetles.

Curculio or Weevil. The long snout is the give-away.  This is a rose curculio on a ‘Harrison’s Yellow’ rose flower. They eat holes in the flower petals, chew up the stamens and lay their eggs in the flower. Hand-picking into soapy water works on these guys. The larva is a legless, whitish grub with a brown head. It drops to the ground when it’s ready to pupate to become an adult. Because it spends part of its life cycle in the soil it is also vulnerable to beneficial nematodes.

Ladybug (aka lady beetle). Not really a bug at all but a true beetle. There are many species of lady beetles and all of them are valuable partners in the garden. They are voracious predators of aphids and other soft bodied insects so they really do a good job of protecting your plants.

On a tour of secret gardens in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kathryn and I peek behind adobe walls for tantalizing glimpses of hidden treasures. Organized by the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens, the tour provides access to several small urban gardens not normally visible to passersby.

A beautifully sophisticated yet rustic fence made of reddish twigs defines the boundary between the garden and the natural environment beyond. This very low maintenance garden, features a beautiful mix of native and exotic plant materials all well adapted to local climate conditions and low rainfall. This is a xeriscape garden. Many people think that a xeriscape consists of a cactus and a couple of rocks surrounded by gravel. Obviously, a xeriscape can be much more than that.

In the beautifully designed private garden of the Richardson home an aesthetically appealing yet functional patio provides a transition between home and garden. This garden places all higher maintenance plantings needing supplemental water within the privacy of the backyard. Kathryn and I designed this garden several years ago.

A Montmorency pie cherry tree and a dwarf peach tree provide fresh fruit in season. The fruit trees are adjacent to the patio in the photo above.

The Richardson home also features a small section of the backyard garden devoted to vegetables such as tomatoes and chili peppers. Blue Penstemon strictus, and yellow Aquilegia chrysantha (yellow columbine) are native wildflowers mixed in with the vegetables.

In the front yard of the Richardson home we see a water conserving xeriscape of native wildflowers, shrubs, and succulents in dramatic contrast to the lush greenness of the private backyard. This portion of the garden faces south and is exposed to the intense heat of full desert sun. The function of the dry streambed is to direct and control excess rainwater from summer thunderstorms.

One aspect of gardening in the high desert of New Mexico is that most of the rainfall occurs during the “monsoon season” in the summertime. Snow in winter also provides some water, but most of the water arrives in torrential summer thunderstorms. All the precipitation (snow, hail, rain) that runs off the roof of the house is captured by downspouts and fed into cisterns which store the water in this garden. An extensive drip-trickle system distributes the water to organically grown vegetables.

Another water management technique is the sunken garden shown here. The rainwater and snowmelt which runs off of impervious surfaces such as the roof of the house is directed into these pit gardens which are sunken well below grade. A Russian olive tree rooted in the bottom of the pit shades the garden and provides a moist, shady microclimate for the plants surrounding it.

This adobe wall and dramatic blue gate provide access to a small urban garden featuring permeable paving using flagstones and creeping thyme. Permeable paving allows precipitation to percolate into groundwater without being shunted off into municipal stormwater drainage systems.

Our book “What’s Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?)” has just been reviewed by Dominique Browning at the New York Times, May 27, 2010. And it’s a really good review too.

Her topic for the reviews is “Gardening Books.” She reviews several good gardening books and our book is among them.

Here’s what she has to say: “Many gardeners find it hard to ask for help. The excellent (and sturdy) WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY PLANT? (And How Do I Fix It?) (Timber Press, paper, $24.95), by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, will be indispensable to them, and to the rest of us as well. The information is concise: “A borer’s hole and frass (poop) are obvious on this asparagus stem.” (Thank you very much.) The illustrations are clear, the remedies organic. I promise you, things will go wrong. Be prepared.” You can read the whole article  at this link

Our book has now been reviewed dozens of times, from the NY Times to the Washington Post and many more. All the reviews have been very positive and we are very grateful. Our book is now an award-winning best-seller. And that is very gratifying indeed.