- From the studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another ugly-tomato episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, You Bet Your Garden.

The tomato harvest isn't pretty, for many of you out there.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And on today's show, we'll discuss the things that can cause mealy flavor and black specks all over.

Plus, a close look at those giant Asian jumping worms.

And, of course, your fabulous phone calls questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions, sardonically situational salutations.

So, keep your eyes and/or ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you cursing the rain and your lack of calcium... ...right after this.

- Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma company, offering a complete selection of natural organic plant foods and potting soils.

More information about Espoma and the Espoma natural gardening community can be found at... - Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA.

I am your host, Mike McGrath.

Coming up later in the show, we're going to tell you what went wrong with your tomatoes this year, and what you can do about it next season.

We're also going to talk to Dr Erica Hannickel about the Asian jumping worm that has people very concerned.

But before that, your fabulous phone calls at... Ed, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you, Mike.

I'm a new fan this summer, and it's an honor to speak with you.

- Well, we'll try to change your opinion during this little talk.

Where are you, Ed?

- I'm in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, Chester County.

- I know where that is.

Very nice area.

All right.

What can we do for Ed in Downingtown, P.A.?

- So, I've been fighting a multi-year battle with what I understand to be Japanese stiltgrass in my flowerbeds, vegetable areas, and the entire lawn.

And I'm starting to wonder if it's a battle I can even win.

- Japanese stiltgrass seems impossible.

But this is one of those "weeds" that pulls easily from wet soil.

So, really, what you have to do is a pulling party, you know, fire up the barbecue, get a couple of cases of really good beer, invite everybody you know, give them gloves, and have them pull.

And interestingly enough, Japanese stiltgrass is also edible.

The roots, I believe, are very similar to bamboo shoots.

So, you know, what better way to get even with a weed than having it for dinner?

- Wow.

- So, that's the real answer.

I don't think it would be susceptible to a flame weeder, or one of the new iron-based herbicides.

But, you know, pulling... that's the old herbicide.

Pull it up.

But, you know, you have to be diligent.

You have to get it all.

And, after that, you know, if you do a good pulling party, after that, you may notice, you know, a couple of shoots here and there, and you'll know.

Soak the soil thoroughly, reach down until your hand is touching the soil, and pull slowly.

This is not "I hate you, I'm yanking you out."

You do that, all those rhizomes will be left underground.

Now, there may be some other advice that's not coming into my tortured brain right now.

So, I want you to go to the website, YouBetYourGarden.org, click on "answers to millions of your garden questions" - OK, says "hundreds" - and then type "stiltgrass" into the search finder and you'll find at least one, perhaps two or three articles we've written about it that goes into more detail and might have other options.

But definitely, it'll also tell you how to eat it.

- Thank you for your advice.

- All right.

Well, thank you, sir.

Bye-bye.

- Take care.

- Now it's time to welcome a guest I've been looking forward to bringing on to the show.

Now, I hope I get this right.

Our guest is Dr Erica Hannickel.

She is professor of environmental history at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin.

She's also the author of Orchid Muse: The Story of an Obsession in 15 Flowers, coming out in 2022, and Empire of Vines: The History of Wine Culture in America, which came out in 2013.

All right, professor, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you so much, Mike.

This is really nice to be on.

I have listened to your show for years upon years.

- All right, now, Dr Erica, you sent me an e-mail about this new, I don't know what you'd call it, frenzy, emphasis, Asian jumping worms.

I mean, they've stolen the spotlight from murder hornets.

-Yeah.

Unfortunately, you know, the information that I'm receiving up here as a master gardener in Wisconsin, and kind of being tapped into garden networks throughout northern Minnesota, too, is that Asian jumping worms are actually a pretty serious threat, especially with our northern forests.

And I think that this applies to, you know, most of basically the top third of the United States.

And this year, it really kind of came into focus for me because before our annual spring plant sale in Duluth, the master gardeners were sending around information from the University of Minnesota and urging everyone to not swap any potted plants that had been dug up from, like, backyard garden soil, for fear that it could carry the worms and/or their eggs.

- Since this all came up, what, two or three years ago, I checked my garden.

All my wormies were fine.

And then, just this season, after a couple of heavy rains, there were these long, and I guess, thick worms that almost resembled three quarters of a garden snake, garter snake.

- My gosh.

- And I wanted to see, you know, "Oh, so you're the jumping bean."

And I touched it, and it jumped!

It was not a little hop.

It was a jump!

- The frightening thing about the jumping worms is, you know, they're changing the soil structure so rapidly, and really, its mineral content, because they process the leaf litter so much faster, they're causing more erosion.

And this is, you know, relative to your red wigglers, or, kind of, you know, normal worms coast-to-coast by this point.

But the scariest thing for me, as an environmental historian, you know, right now, thinking long-term is that the soils invaded by jumping worms are also releasing more carbon dioxide, and you know, as well as outcompeting other worms that might be beneficial, you know, in certain types of ecosystems.

So at least up here, it's - yeah, sorry... - No, no, that's OK.

I want to stop you there, because up to now, there was this large group of people who were claiming that our regular earthworms were also not native, and they were doing the same thing.

They were over... And what we're talking about really is overfeeding the forest floor, right?

- Right, exactly.

That's exactly right.

- Yeah, you know, and that is still the case up here.

I mean, you can talk to botanists and ecologists up here and they will tell you, you know, "Please don't dump your garden soil out in the woods," and, you know, "anywhere near any wild lands because, you know, "we can still slow the spread, "at least, of those types of worms."

I mean, the Asian jumping worms are especially bad for northern temperate hardwood forests, because they're also reducing the understory.

So, that's making room for other invasives.

So, it's not a literal direct attack on the largest trees in our forests.

It's the understory.

And so, thereby degrading the ecosystem and then, degrading their trees on top of that.

And so, like, with the processing of the soil and the potential for the degradation of the forest environment, you're talking about losing a whole lot more carbon-capturing ability, which is kind of what I'm thinking about a whole lot these days.

Here's the one saving grace with Asian jumping worms, they really do actually move quite slowly north on their own.

So, to get good purchase in northern soils, they have to be physically brought here.

They're not going to just, kind of, like, magically move north many hundreds of miles.

- They're not going to leave my garden beds and go down the shore in the summertime?

- Right, I mean, they move, like, inches to feet per year, and, you know, but if we're giving them, you know, hitching a ride with us 50 miles north, 150 miles north, if you're going to, you know... - Erica.

- ...or sharing things.

- Erica, this has changed so much of my perspective and so much of my answers, you know, email.

"Dear Mike, we are moving from upstate New York to California.

"We're taking all of our plants with us.

"How can we take them in an open bed, truck, truck bed?"

And before, it was, "No, you want to throw a tarp over it.

"You want them to be protected somewhat."

And now, there's so many things I have to tell people they're not allowed to do.

And I want to keep this in the front of my conscience.

Conscience?

- Right.

- No, no, not my conscience.

My consciousness.

- Consciousness.

Right.

- Which is failing me tremendously right now.

- I know.

You know, you often, on your show, talk about good citizen science opportunities.

And I feel like there's really potential here with this specific issue, because there's something called Great Lakes Worm Watch.

I don't know if you heard this.

It's a great resource.

You can Google it.

It's called "Great Lakes Worm Watch".

- I'm sorry, but that's a boring hobby!

"Look!

Look, it moved!"

- They've got citizen science projects on there.

But I'm also wondering if, you know, gardeners who are listening to your show might want to try summarizing, or might want to try other methods of eradicating those worms if they know that they have them, because I have read that prolonged drought can kill them off.

But I wonder if, you know, summarizing your soil might help as well.

You know, they live in only the top few inches of soil.

And I've also read that if you can achieve three days sustained at 85 degrees or higher, now, that's not going to be possible everywhere, but it would be possible in some areas.

Could you maybe get rid of them in that area?

- OK, so you're saying to solarize the soil using clear plastic, 1-3 mils saturated soil, put the plastic over, use bricks to keep it tight at the end, that you can solarize these guys in three days, you know, because normally it takes a whole season.

- Right, it's not...

It has not been sort of widespread practice, all the official websites like the University of Minnesota say that there is no remedy.

But if you dig in some other corners, there have been people experimenting with these types of methods.

And I would love to see people experiment more.

I mean, I don't know that we have anything to lose.

- One way this could work for you is simply how people go to this Worm Watch - which they totally stole from Monarch Watch, please... - It's a good concept.

- "I want to tag worms!

Tag fell off again."

But would it be valuable to you and your colleagues to get reports from gardeners that, forget all over the country, we've got all over the world listening to the podcast.

How about if, I don't know if your worm watch is set up for this, but how about just anybody who sees these creatures in their garden?

Just check in, reveal, you know, the exact place where they live.

I think you can use Google, like, to latitude and longitude and everything, right?

And that way, you have an idea of what the range is now, and if it expands over the next five years.

I think that would be an absolutely invaluable set of data for the researchers here.

I am not directly involved in Great Lakes Worm Watch.

I am just a, kind of, fangirl, and have been checking them out for a while.

- Do you have their T-shirt?

- Exactly.

Exactly.

Oh, man, that's a good idea.

And that's an Etsy product waiting to happen.

I just want to say thanks to you, Mike, your show has been a really bright light for me, and I know a lot of other people in Covid times, as well.

You've been a real help to get us out of our heads and into our gardens for a while.

- I'm just a mensch.

What can I say?

- You sure are.

- All right.

I want to thank Dr. Erica Hannickel, author of books on orchids and wine grape vines.

She is professor of environmental history at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin.

And I want to thank you very much for being on the show.

Keep an eye on us, and tell us how we're doing.

- Thanks so much.

- My pleasure.

Thank you for being with us.

Well, it's that time again, cats and kittens.

The Question of the Week.

Now, during my last taping, the first two phone calls I fielded were about tomatoes.

Can of corn, right?

Two softballs to start the day, right?

Wrong.

First, I struggled with mealy-tasting tomatoes, and then, tomatoes with black centers.

Feeling inadequate on both answers.

But then I heard my response to one of the questions on the podcast and the other one on the TV show.

Different people edit those shows, and I never know what the final versions will look or sound like, but you should definitely watch and/or listen to both.

All right.

Turns out my answers were pretty good after all, but I still think I should have done better.

So here's the "Oh, he's had some time to think about it" version.

The first call was from Amy in Indianapolis, who wanted to know why her tomatoes tasted mealy.

In response to my stalling for time questions, she explained that they had been deluged by tons of rain early in the season and her first crop was pretty much lost to blossom end rot.

And then I kind of nailed it when I asked if she had used my crushed egg shells in the planting hole trick, and she sheepishly... Sheepishly?

She, like a sheep, revealed that this was the first time in ten years she had forgotten to do it.

Too much rain and lack of calcium in the soil, I proclaimed.

I was sweating bullets, but it turned out to be a good diagnosis.

That's one for me.

The Mississippi State Extension reports that the most common causes of mealy-tasting tomatoes are too much water, especially early in the season, too much nitrogen in the soil and too little potassium.

Potassium?

Po-tassium.

You know what I mean.

And calcium.

They also point out that some varieties are more susceptible than others, but they don't name names.

And of course, they warn us to avoid the agony of defeat by never putting tomatoes in the fridge.

Temperatures below 55 degrees ruin the flavor and make tomatoes mealy.

Other sources also warned of too much water early in the season, especially in container-grown fruits.

Always use the biggest pots possible.

The condition generally affects the first grown fruits when they're still too tiny to process much water.

Ah, but too much water at the end of the season can also dilute the flavor.

Many sources add the tomatoes grow best and develop their finest flavor in soil with a pH of around 6.5, which is just slightly acidic and right in the perfect pH zone for most of the plants of summer.

The reason goes back to calcium, as a low pH won't allow the plants to take up any calcium that is in the soil.

If your pH is low, bring it up with agricultural lime or ashes from a hardwood stove, both of which also supply calcium.

And finally, all sources approve of eating the fruit, but cooked like in tomato sauce, where lots of added herbs and stuff can enhance the flavor.

I use Asian hoisin sauce for this.

Search online and you'll find a surprisingly large number of "mealy tomato recipes".

A site called MyRecipes lists at least 35 different options.

Joanne in Abington, PA, was the second call.

She did do the egg shells, but her tomatoes developed black spots on the outside that led to black centers, which sure sounded like some kind of blossom end rot to me.

And several sources agreed that the cause might be an unusual form of blossom end rot.

But this one doesn't cause black spots on the outside, indicating that she probably has a different problem.

Among the dizzying number of choices offered by Clemson University are early blight, caused by pathogens in the soil.

Be sure to strictly observe a three-year rotation of tomatoes and other crops in the solanaceous family, like potatoes, peppers and eggplant.

Maybe even start a new bed, but don't transfer any of the old infected soil to it.

In fact, don't even use the same tools.

If used early, sprays of copper may help limit the progression.

Plant-resistant varieties which are, finally, named in this article.

Bacterial spot, which makes black spots on the outside of the green fruits, but not on the inside.

Heavy rain is the most common cause.

Spray with copper and try and keep your leaves dry.

Anthracnose.

Symptoms mesh nicely, with crowding a big cause.

Provide lots of space between your plants, mulch the soil with lots of compost to block transmission from soil to plant and cage tomatoes to improve air circulation.

And be sure to plant them in full sun.

I could list a few other possibilities, around 250, and that's just in the north, but I'm already depressed by looking at all the dirty pictures of dying tomato plants.

See what I go through for you people?

If you'd like to get equally depressed, just check your nearest state extension website for all the terrible things that can happen to your tomatoes.

OK, but the bottom line, don't use high nitrogen fertilizers, mulch heavily with compost, space plants three feet apart, in full sun, in raised beds, rotate your plants every two or three years.

If you don't have that kind of room, grow fewer plants or grow your extras someplace else.

And always give them plenty of calcium.

And if impossibly nasty weather attacks and they're just saturated the whole summer, remember, as in baseball, there's always next year.

Well, that sure was more than you wanted to hear about a ton of potential tomato tragedies, now, wasn't it?

And whether you want it or not, you can read this depressing but informative article over and over at your leisure, or your leisure, because the Question of the Week always appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

Just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be, sing it out, kids, youbetyourgarden.org.

Gardens Alive support the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week, and you will always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

You Bet Your Garden is a half-hour public television show, an hour-long public radio show and podcast, all produced and delivered to you weekly by Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA. Our radio show is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when a rogue Virginia Beach wave knocked him head over tea kettle, which luckily carried him away from the grasp of an enormous but yet unseen great white shark.

What?

Yeah, Jaws was on the other day.

Why?

Why do you ask?

Yikes!

My producer is threatening to make my tomatoes taste mealy only if I don't get out of this studio.

Woo!

We must be out of time.

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You'll find all of our contact information, plus answers to your garden questions, audio of this show, video of this show, audio and video of all the shows.

What do you want?

Oh, and links to our internationally renowned podcast.

It's all at our website, youbetyourgarden.org I'm your host, Mike McGrath, reminding all of you cats and kittens to make every day a fruitful day or a vegetative day or arboreal or... Or just make it a ducky day, OK?

And good night, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are.