Jefferson County Extension Office

06/01/2026

Here's your June landscape checklist for Mississippi! Some tasks to consider are...

Plant daylilies and summer annuals.
Scout for pests and diseases.
Plant warm season grasses.
Fertilize ornamental shrubs and trees.
Remove faded flowers.
Plant crape myrtles while blooming.

Learn more about these tasks here: https://extension.msstate.edu/blog/june-garden-checklist

05/23/2026

New Soil Testing Information! Soil testing is the first step to healthy soil and productive crops, pastures, turf and gardens.

Follow the steps below to submit your soil sample:

Order online. Visit soiltesting.extension.msstate.edu and follow the instructions to complete your order. Enter your contact info, sample names and crop or intended use.

Choose payment. Cost is $12 per sample. You may pay by cash or check sent with your soil sample or choose to receive an invoice to pay by credit card. Your payment options are cash, check or invoice.

Prepare and label your sample. Collect the soil to be tested. Fill the sample collection container to the fill line and close the container. Write the “sample name” (and your name, if desired) on the outside of the container. Clearly write your order number and sample name on each container. This information must match what was entered online.

Ship or drop off your sample. The new shipping address and drop off location is:
Southern Soil & Plant Lab, LLC.
117 Haley Barbour Parkway
Yazoo City, MS 39194

Receive results. Results will be sent to you and your county Extension office. You can contact your Extension agent for assistance with the sample report and recommendations.

Important Reminders

Cost is $12 per sample.

You may pick up your soil sample containers from your county Extension office.

You are responsible for shipping samples to the soil testing laboratory.

Contact your local Extension office for help with collecting soil samples, understanding crop codes, interpreting soil test reports and general soil fertility questions.

05/22/2026

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!

05/15/2026

05/15/2026

Harvesting blueberries at the peak of ripeness ensures you get the greatest health benefits and the best taste!

Depending on location and cultivar, rabbiteye blueberries begin to ripen in mid-May to June and are ready for harvesting after they have turned a uniform light blue. Redness indicates the berry is not fully ripe.

A uniform blue color means the berry is ready to be picked. Especially look toward the stem end where it may still be green, white, or rose colored even though the rest of the berry looks blue.

Once harvested, blueberries can be eaten immediately, refrigerated for a short time, or frozen for longer. Always wash the fruit before you eat it. If you are storing the berries for use later, wait until just before you want to use them to wash them. Washing berries before refrigerating or freezing will make them break down and leak.

05/12/2026

“What’s going on with my tomatoes?!” Tomatoes are the most popular vegetable to grow in Mississippi, so we get a lot of calls when gardeners have questions!

This is a helpful cheat sheet of common problems with tomatoes. We have a great Extension publication that explains in further detail the most common disorders and methods of prevention. You can read it here: http://extension.msstate.edu/publications/tomato-troubles-common-problems-tomatoes

BLOSSOM-END ROT
It appears as a dry, leathery (not mushy), dark brown or black area, usually at or near the bottom of the fruit. BER can sometimes occur on the side of fruit, and occasionally only on the inside, so the BER is hidden until the tomato is sliced open. Sometimes the spot is sunken, and these tomatoes often ripen before all others.

BER is not caused by an infectious agent (pathogen) and is, therefore, not a disease. It is a physiological disorder caused by lack of adequate calcium in developing fruit. It’s common to see BER on the first tomatoes of the season. While low calcium in fruit is the cause, the real culprit is often drought. Without a steady supply of water, the tiny root hairs dry out, which limits the amount of calcium the plants can absorb and supply to developing fruit. Don’t let plants wilt between waterings. The best way to prevent damage to root hairs caused by drying out is to provide consistent water and to mulch around plants.

FRUIT CRACKING
Cracking is a common problem in tomatoes when growing conditions are not perfect. Cracks can be described as radial—those that radiate from the stem end and move downward—and concentric—those that form rings around the stem end of the fruit.

Both types of cracks are signs of inconsistent water content in the plant. Uneven watering will promote fruit cracking, so be sure that plants are getting enough water. Cracking can also be promoted by very fast growth, excessive moisture (rain or heavy watering) after a dry period, high temperature, a large difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures, and inadequate nutrition.

Not all cracking can be avoided, but the severity can be lessened by mulching, maintaining an even water supply, and using an adequate fertilizer program. Some varieties are also resistant to cracking.

UNEVEN RIPENING
Uneven ripening includes green stripes, streaks, or blotches; stars on the bottoms of fruit; and yellow or green shoulders. Sometimes, one wall or one portion of the tomato will remain green or white even after the rest of the tomato turns red.

This problem may be caused by a number of factors, so the exact cause can be hard to determine. Most likely causes are high fertility (usually nitrogen), low potassium, high temperature (the red pigment, lycopene, is killed around 93°F), infection by certain viruses, and sweetpotato whitefly feeding.

Be sure to maintain adequate nutrition by soil testing and applying fertilizer according to the recommendations. A tissue analysis can help reveal if the cause is nutritional.

CATFACING
Catfacing is a condition in which the fruit becomes malformed or irregularly shaped, often with brown scars at the blossom end that sometimes run up the sides of the fruit. The blossom end of the fruit will often be puckered with deep crevices. This is different from BER, which shows up as dark brown areas on the bottoms of fruit but without the puckering or crevices.

In its most severe form, the bottoms of fruit seem to be turned inside out so that the seed cavity is visible on the outside. It usually only affects the earliest fruit set due to the cooler temperature at that time; later-harvested fruit are generally not affected. Catfacing does not affect the edibility of the fruit. The scars can be cut off and the rest of the tomato eaten.

Catfacing is almost always caused by cool temperatures during pollination and early growth. Some varieties are more susceptible than others. The only management methods are to plant later in the season, use resistant varieties, and use plastic or spun-bound row covers to increase temperature on cool days and nights.

05/07/2026

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

Muskmelons
New Zealand Spinach
Peanuts
Snap bush beans
Watermelons

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

05/04/2026

Here's your landscape checklist for May! Some tasks to consider:

Begin summer lawn maintenance.
Fertilize turf after it has turned green.
Prune azaleas and camellias.
Mulch all plants.
Plant summer annuals and perennials.
Watch for garden pests and disease.

Learn more about each of these tasks + find further resources here: https://extension.msstate.edu/blog/may-garden-checklist

04/29/2026

DO NOT use fire ant mound treatments containing the active ingredient acephate in the vegetable garden! Acephate is commonly used to treat fire ant mounds in home lawns but must not be used around edible plants. Acephate is a systemic insecticide that is readily absorbed by plant roots and translocated to leaves and fruit of vegetables.

Some fire ant baits can be used in the garden and lawn. These include baits containing the active ingredients methoprene or spinosad. Baits containing spinosad are relatively fast-acting and this makes them a good choice for controlling mounds that occur in the garden itself, but it will still take a two or three weeks to see results.

Don’t wait until you have big mounds, go ahead and apply one of these baits as soon as you see fire ants moving into the garden. But don’t forget to treat the lawn area around the outside of the garden as well. Workers from mounds located just outside the garden will readily forage into the garden area.

Here's a great resource if you want to learn more about safely keeping fire ants out of your vegetable garden: https://extension.msstate.edu/insects/fire-ants/control-fire-ants-and-around-home-vegetable-gardens