My colleague Mike Risinit has a good article in yesterday’s paper on the big push under way at Constitution Marsh in Philipstown to control common reed, or Phragmites australis.

Researchers are worried that a nonnative strain from Europe is taking over North American marshes. Iona Island downriver in Stony Point has been particularly hard hit with Phragmites.

If you’ve never been to the Constitution Marsh Audubon Center and Sanctuary, it’s worth a trip. It sits in a great spot on the Hudson, off Route 9D just south of Cold Spring. You can walk way out into the marsh on a wooden boardwalk and platform. Great birds, nice hike.

Here’s a link with more info on the marsh, with photos. And another with directions etc.

Did you know that global warming is making poison ivy bigger, stronger and more widespread?

Turns out that poison ivy thrives on carbon dioxide better than any other plant, producing bigger leaves and more potent urushiol oil. Any contact with this oil is what causes the awful poison ivy rash and blisters.

Here’s a file photo by our Tom Nycz.

My colleague Greg Clary, our environmental writer, has an article in today’s paper on a recent study showing that poison ivy is the No. 1 beneficiary of climate change and increased carbon emissions. Ugh, bad news for gardeners.

I try not to use chemicals when I garden, but all bets are off when it comes to poison ivy. Some people like Roundup, but I prefer Brush-B-Gone for poison ivy control.

I’ve also become a big fan of Technu, which you rub on after exposure to keep the rash from developing. It really works…. and I’m really allergic.

Until I learned it’s the sole food source for larval monarch butterflies, I always treated milkweed like any other weed.

Now I leave as much around as I can stand (it gets pretty invasive) and I’ve come to like its verticality and almost tropical look in a field or wildflower meadow.

Like daisies and mulleins, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) tends to pop up right in the middle of a pathway, so I rip it out there. Otherwise, I let it self-seed and ramble around an open field I’ve got.

By mid-summer, milkweed gets a little too tattered and ratty looking for a spot in a perennial border, but it looks right at home in wilder and more informal settings.

This North American native perennial grows 5 or 6 feet tall and has smooth green leaves that are about 4 inches wide and 9 inches long. Purplish-pink flower heads appear in mid-summer and then develop into large pale-green seedpods.

The pods have a warty outer skin filled with white, silky fluff that carries the large seeds on the wind like a parachute in the fall.

The stout stems of the plant exude lots of milky latex when cut.

Milkweed likes full sun and average soil. Like many natives, it’s also very drought tolerant — and deer resistant. And butterflies seem to like it a lot.

Like most Hudson Valley gardeners, I tend to get all my herb and vegetable seeds and plants into the garden in mid to late May and then sit back and wait for the haul.

By mid-summer, it’s usually a pretty good haul. But the dirty little secret is that some of the best herbs (parsley, dill and basil) start bolting and going to seed right about now. They begin to taste bitter, too.

The Web site for Renee’s Garden has a good article on Gardening for a Second Season.

While you’re enjoying your tomatoes and cukes, perhaps you’d like to look ahead to fall when you’d like some of the things that do well in cooler weather, good things like arugula, chard, spinach and fennel. There’s still plenty of time to get them into the ground.

I’ve had tons of blackberries this summer, much more than ever before.

When I first bought my old chicken farm 10 years ago, most of it was overrun with bramble, Japanese honeysuckle, Japanese barberry and evil wild roses (Rosa multiflora). And lots of collapsed barbed wire fencing. Basically, you couldn’t step off the driveway except for the yard around the house.

As I’ve hacked my way into more and more of the big field in the middle and killed off the invasives, especially the wild roses, I’ve been rewarded with more native wildflowers like asters, goldenrod, milkweed and Joe-pye weed.

Great. They look healthier and more abundant every year. I’ve also uncovered more and more old raspberry and blackberry plants that are now thriving in new sunlight and open air. Even better.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been suiting up in the early morning in long pants, boots, big hat and a long-sleeved shirt to pick my way through newly manageable weeds and bramble to get to the ripening berries.

It’s surprising how quickly the blackberries go from unripe red to pale purple to full black.

What a treat. I’m getting almost 2 quarts some days.

Don’t they look yum?

Here’s a previous post on black raspberries and one on strawberries. As you might imagine, my freezer is bursting with berries.

Winter is looking better already.

The Japanese beetle invasion seems to be getting worse by the day. Evil little creatures.

Some of my plants look absolutely skeletal. Here’s an earlier post of mine.

I’ve been wandering around the Web, too, and found some good stuff.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say.

And Tom Bodett on his blog.

Another blogger, called The Wooden Porch.

A funny read from another blogger.

And another blog.

From the UK College of Agriculture, on Managing Adult Japanese Beetles, here.

I also came across this great post about blog etiquette.

I’m normally the shy, retiring type about my birthday, but I seem to be busted here.

Yes, I have a birthday this week and my friends Suki and Arnie host an annual BLT bash to coincide with it. It was yesterday … and it was fantastic.

You can see for yourself at her Feeding Frenzy blog at foodnetwork.com. If possible, the food was even better than the delicious pictures.

I can’t get enough heirloom tomatoes this time of year (even for breakfast), and it seems to be a great year for them in the Hudson Valley. And there is no better bacon to accompany them than the hickory-smoked variety from Oscar’s Adirondack Smoke House in Warrensburg, NY.

Happy eating.

Keeping the garden looking colorful and fresh in August is always a challenge.

Along with phlox and butterfly bush, one of my favorite August bloomers is a tough little perennial known as globe thistle or Echinops ritro.

Here’s a photo that our Joe Larese shot in Anna Warner’s restored garden on Constitution Island.

The spiny, coarse-textured leaves emerge in early spring, but it seems to take most of the summer for this deer-resistant plant to really get going.

The flowers are great when they finally do appear — perfectly round and densely clustered blue spheres. Their vivid color and unusual shape contrast well with other summer bloomers.

Full sun seems to be their main requirement. These thistles are not fussy at all about soil types (poor and dry is fine) and I’ve never bothered to water mine.

The foliage tends to begin to die back in mid-summer, so these plants do best at the back or middle of a perennial border. The flowers do well indoors in vases and as part of dried arrangements for winter.

Bees and butterflies love the blue flowers. Here’s another shot by Joe.

Let the summer begin. We finally have a tomato that’s ready to eat. Bring on the BLTs!

(I know, I know, we’re late this year—a little slow on the draw back in May.) Luckily, the labels stayed relatively close to the tomato plants this year, so I know this one’s a giant green zebra. Here’s a look at it off the vine.

Handsome, no? And as delicious as it looks, with fresh mozzarella and homegrown basil.

And so much for the Early Girl variety that we were sure would be the first one across the finish line – they look like green golf balls.

I’m just catching up after being away for a few days. I’ve been meaning to stop by the New York Botanical Garden but haven’t found the time yet this summer.

I love to go in September and October—for fall color and also for a close look at the Ladies Border and the Perennial Garden. I’m always amazed at all the late-blooming plants they find and I like to go for ideas for my own garden.

Meanwhile, my friend and colleague Mary Shustack has made one of her shopping pilgrimages to the Shop in the Garden at NYBG on her Just Browsing blog. Here’s a link to her blog post. Lots of nice photos. I forget what good stuff they have there.

I see that Mary also stopped by Shades of Green in Peekskill, another gardening store I’ve been meaning to get to. Here’s a link to that post.