Mississippi State University Extension Service

Leaffooted bugs can ruin a late-season vegetable garden!! Like stink bugs, which feed in a similar manner, leaffooted bugs attack a wide range of garden vegetables including, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, peas, and beans.

They are especially damaging to tomatoes and they love tomatillios. Damage is caused primarily by the highly mobile adults, which feed on fruit with their piercing-sucking mouthparts, injecting their toxic saliva in the process and causing soft, sunken spots in the fruit. In addition, even mildly damaged fruit will often have an off taste. Also like stink bugs, leaffooted bugs have a distinctive, unpleasant odor, and they tend to congregate in groups.

Adults make a loud buzzing sound as they fly, and gardeners who are busy picking vegetables are often startled by the sound and sometimes mistake these for bees or wasps. The nymphs are reddish orange with black legs.

Infestations are highest in late summer and fall because they have already completed one or more generations and especially because adults are attracted to lush, productive vegetable gardens as they are flying from nearby, and not so nearby, weeds and row crops that have matured and are no longer suitable hosts.

Control: Spraying with an effective insecticide to directly contact as many insects as possible is the key to successfully controlling leaffooted bugs. Plan on spraying every 7 to 10 days once you begin to see, or hear, or smell, significant numbers of adults in the garden.

Because adults often fly out of the garden when disturbed (when they hear you coming with the sprayer) only to return later, spraying early in the morning, when temperatures are cooler and cold-blooded insects move more slowly, can help improve control.

Because treatment is most often needed during the harvest period, it is important to choose insecticides with short pre-harvest intervals (PHIs) and to coordinate your spraying and picking schedule. Zeta-cypermethrin (GardenTech Sevin Insect Killer Concentrate) and permethrin (several brand names) are two effective insecticides that have short PHIs on most garden vegetables. See product labels for details.

Some gardeners use a trap crop of large-flowered sunflowers to attract leaffooted bugs away from vegetable crops they are trying to protect. It only takes a dozen or so sunflower plants to do this in an average garden. Adults are attracted to the sunflowers and will lay their eggs and produce nymphs there. But be sure to spray the bugs on the sunflowers before the nymphs can mature and move to your vegetables. Otherwise you will have a nursery crop, rather than a trap crop!

It’s important to protect yourself from ticks. Ticks can carry diseases and being bitten by a diseased tick isn’t something you want to risk.

Ticks are present year-round but are most active during warmer weather. As you’re out and about this summer, consider these steps to help prevent you and your loved ones from being bitten by a tick:

Ticks live in grassy, brushy, or wooded areas. If possible, avoid these areas.

Wear high-top boots with long pants tucked into the boots. If you don’t have boots, tuck your pants into your socks. Tuck your shirt into your pants and spray any exposed skin with a DEET-based repellent. You can also spray permethrin on your clothes to help deter ticks.

When you get indoors, shower and check for ticks.

Ticks can be carried into your home on your clothes. Throw your clothes in the dryer for 10 minutes to kill any ticks that may be on the clothes. If you need to wash your clothes, wash with hot water, as cold and medium temperatures will not kill ticks.

What should you do if you find a tick on your skin? Grab a pair of fine-tipped tweezers and pull the tick upward in a steady, even motion off your skin. Promptly wash your hands and disinfect the bite.

What do you do with the tick? Do not crush the tick with your fingers! It’s recommended to place it in rubbing alcohol, flush it down the toilet, or place it in a sealed bag. Watch for a rash or fever after being bitten. This may occur several weeks after the bite. If either occur, please see your doctor.

Silly fawn, why are you eating dirt?

Deer, along with all other ruminants, have a 4-chambered stomach composed of a rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. Plant material is extremely difficult to break down and deer can’t do it on their own. They enlist the help of billions of microbes living in their stomach to do the work for them.

Fawns are born with a sterile rumen, meaning they must populate their stomach with microbes from the environment. The first 24 hours after fawns are born are critical because this is the only time that fawns are able to absorb colostrum from their mother’s milk. Colostrum is extremely rich in energy, fat, microbes, and antibodies to help jump-start their immune system.

After that period, they get microbes from eating soil, plants, and even licking f***s of other deer. A doe weans her fawns when they’re 12-16 weeks old, but fawns can survive exclusively on vegetation at 10 weeks.

Limelight hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata) are really showing out this time of year! They thrive in full sun to part shade.

The quantity of flowers is incredible. The 6- to 12-inch-long flower heads are held upright on the plant. The flowers start off a chartreuse that is almost white, then change to bright, light lime. As fall approaches, the flowers start turning pink.

Soil pH does not affect the color of the flowers like it does with the blue or pink big-leafed hydrangeas. Any flowers left on the plant do provide winter texture and interest.

Limelight blooms on new wood, so prune in late fall or early spring. A medium pruning that removes one-third to one-half the plant size gives a better structure for large blossoms and the new season ahead. Feed your hydrangea in early spring as new growth resumes.

Mississippi’s watermelon producers face a tough year as summer rains diminish what they had expected would be a good crop.

“The crop looked really good until all the rain started,” said Heath Steede, Mississippi State University Extension Service agent in George County.

Watermelons require the right balance of rain, sun and warm temperatures to reach peak size and sweetness. Rains early in the growing season help melons grow to the proper size, but excess rain later in the season can introduce diseases, allow those diseases to spread faster and cause melons to ruin.

Steede said he is seeing plenty of ruined melons in fields in the southeast corner of the state where most of Mississippi’s watermelons are grown. George County alone has watermelon production on 1,500 to 2,000 acres.

“As in years past when it starts raining every day, the vines start to rapidly decline. The melons will start to get water spots on them that make the melons unmarketable,” he said.

Water-soaked spots appear on melons when the fruit gets too much rain. These spots appear as slight blemishes when harvested but break open and leak within 24 hours of harvest.

Steede said this year is reminiscent of the excess rain producers saw eight years ago.

“This year has been a lot like 2017 with excessive rain, which not only hurts the melons but also makes it more difficult to get them out of the field. Overall, I’d say this has not been a very good year for our local growers.”

Read our full article here: https://ow.ly/JNa350Woobs

🦈Our MSU Extension marine fisheries ecology team had a great time at the Gulf State Park-Alabama Pier celebrating all the sharky things, sharing research, reconnecting with familiar faces, and making many new friends.

We appreciate all the shark enthusiasm and thought-provoking questions.

📸 Mississippi State University Marine Fisheries Ecology

Another reason we have the best Master Gardeners--They'll dress up as trees if it means helping teach kids at plant camp! Great job, Marshall County!!

If YOU want to become a Master Gardener, registration will open on August 13. Stay tuned for details by following our page or by contacting your county's MSU Extension agent. Find yours here: https://extension.msstate.edu/county-offices



📸 Marshall County Extension Office

That's a lot of pickles!! These Webster County 4-H'ers were excited to learn how to can their very own pickles. We are proud of them for learning something new!

Maybe YOU want to learn more about canning...Well, you're in luck. We have a great Extension publication that is a resource every home canner should have. Read it here: https://ow.ly/NRIP50WnlSm



📸 Webster County Extension Office

Christmas in July for the MSU Extension Gamebird Program! They just unboxed 70 GPS transmitters (with more on the way!) and a fresh batch of leg bands — officially kicking off the first fully operational year of their mallard tracking project in the Delta.🦆

From the banding pliers to the solar-powered transmitters that fit in the palm of your hand, everything’s in place. These tools help us uncover how mallards use wetlands, respond to environmental stressors, and navigate complex landscapes during winter.

They are counting down the days until fall. Stay tuned and follow the MSU Extension Gamebird Program page as they scale up this effort for the 2025–2026 season — more birds, more data, more conservation impact.

Big thanks to our partners-- Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, USFWS, and our amazing cooperating landowners!

Do you know the difference?🌽

Field corn is the primary type of corn grown in the United States. It’s used for food products (cereal, chips, corn syrup, grits, corn meal), ethanol, and polymers. The main use of field corn is for animal feed. You’ve probably looked at field corn stalks and thought, “That corn is dead!” Producers leave it in the field until the corn and husks dry out, making the harvest and storage processes much easier.

Sweet corn makes up only one percent of corn grown in the U.S. each year. This is the type of corn you buy in the grocery store or from a farmers market and eat right off the cob. It’s harvested in the summer when it is tender, and the husks are still mostly green.

Bonus fact: Popcorn is a completely different type of corn that retains moisture when dried. When heated, the corn kernels pop and turn inside out, making popcorn!

Have you ever been on a walk in the woods, park, or backyard and noticed animal tracks in the mud or dirt? Some tracks are easy to identify, while others are a bit harder to tell which animal they belong to.

When examining animal tracks, ask yourself a few questions:

How many toes does the animal have?
Are there claw marks?
Is the front or rear foot larger?
What are the general shapes of the tracks?
How long and wide are the tracks?

White-Tailed Deer

🦌It has two toes per foot with occasional dewclaws.
🦌Its tracks are symmetrical.
🦌Each track looks like an upside-down heart.
🦌The front tracks are slightly larger than the hind.
🦌Tracks typically range from 1½ to 3 inches long and 1 to 2½ inches wide.

If you're interested in learning more about deer, the MSU Deer Lab is a great page to follow!

Here's your veggie planting guide for July! Some of the vegetables you can plant in your garden this month include...

✅Snap pole beans
🫛Lima bush and pole beans
🌽Corn
🥒Cucumbers
🍆Eggplant
🟩Okra
🫘Southern peas
🌶Peppers (plants)
🍠Sweet potatoes (plants)
🎃Winter squash (pumpkins)
💛Summer squash
🍅Tomatoes (plants)

🚨Planting times will vary by area.🚨

Read our Mississippi Vegetable Gardener’s Guide for TONS of great info: https://extension.msstate.edu/publications/mississippi-vegetable-gardeners-guide

Contact your county’s Extension agent for localized guidance! Find yours here: https://extension.msstate.edu/county-offices