Garden Pests

With all of the rain we have had this year my flower gardens are the lushest,  most bloom-filled I have ever had. The johnny jumps went crazy and filled in all sorts of holes. The daisies and lamb's ears sent out seeds and shoots to fill in their end of the garden. The lilies have multiplied over the years to create a large drift. Besides the rain, it might also have helped  because I sprinkled the beds with Osmocote and added compost in a few places.

My only disappointment has been with the bee balm, which for the second year has been severely damaged before bloom time. Last year I attributed its poor performance to drought. This year I decided to investigate. I found my plants loaded with these bugs, which are probably the bee balm beetle, or one-spotted tortoise beetle. Their excrement makes them appear as if they have fish tails.  I could not find any method of pest control for them, so I resorted to washing my plants down with Shaklee Basic H, and then hand-picking. My first picking was around June 20th. A week later the bugs were turned mostly to yellow beetles with one small black spot on each side of their shell. Yesterday I went out for my third picking, and found only four or five beetles on the undersides of the leaves. Four or five of the stalks have been  completely eaten, and others are half eaten, but the rest look very healthy. Several stalks have buds on them. I am sure now that they will thrive.

The rains brought the return of a second pest, the Japanese beetle, which occupies my rose bushes almost every year. Last year I did not have them. I decided to try hand picking those as well to see if I can keep them under control. They seem to congregate several on a bud, so yesterday I was able to shake a few buds to get most of them off. (Heaven forbid that I would actually touch one of them with my  bare hands! Eeew!) As with the tortoise beetle, I dumped them into a solution of water with a squirt of Basic H. They drowned in a matter of seconds. (The tortoise beetles died instantly.)

I ripped out the last of the landscape fabric which I had in the yard around my climbing rose and cranberry bushes. I hate that stuff. There were no weeds growing through it, but many weeds growing on top of it. The weed roots seem to cling to the landscape fabric, making them harder to pull out than if I were just pulling them out of the ground. Besides that the stuff never seems to stay covered. The mulch which I had put on top of the fabric had disintegrated and turned into a reddish  soil. The lilies which I planted in that section  just this spring are ready to bloom. Some of them look as though the rabbits have gotten them, though. All the more reason to trim back the forsythia bush, so that the cat can have easy access to the little buggers. I have seen cottontails in the neighborhood a couple of times, and I have also seen cottontail fuzz in the yard, so I believe one of them and Gracie have had at least one close encounter.

I had a woodpecker at my mesh finch feeder this morning. I was a bit surprised,  given that I had peanuts on the table feeder on one side of it, and whole sunflower seeds in the feeder on the other side. The birds have not touched Ariana's leftover graham crackers, which I put on the table feeder.

June First

I was digging through the trash to find a plant tag from the church flowers, and found the ornamental grass tag for my pot at home. It is Blue Mohawk, juncus inflexus. The name does do justice, since the spikes stick straight up.

I went nursery-hopping the other day looking for replacement plants for the Mary Garden at St. John Cantius. The original plan  was to find some poppies to go with the two small plants which are already there. I was not successful in finding reds, so I decided to go with the pink Veronica which I found in sufficient quantity at Woods Farmer Seed and Nursery.  I went to plant them and noticed that Benjamin bunny had topped off one of my new oriental lilies. Time to add some used cat litter to the beds to see if it will be an effective deterrent.  

In the process of looking for the poppies I found toadflax, linaria purpurea. Toadflax has a history for me. I originally saw this plant at the botanical garden in St. Louis, Missouri while we were visiting Fr. Scott Daniels at St. Louis University several years ago. I thought it interesting and pretty, so wrote the plant name in my book. I could not find any information when I looked it up later, and have never seen it in a nursery. ( I bet I had typed it into the computer as two separate words.)  I was pleasantly surprised, then, to see it at the Plant Place at Cash-Wise East.. I purchased a pot to bring home. It appeared again the next day when we toured the Como Park Conservatory, much to my delight. The conservatory plants were huge in their warm habitat compared to mine, but I am still excited to be able to watch it grow.The tag does say it is zone 3 hardy.

A bit more grass sprouting around the yard. It is about the time for the seed which I purchased from Woods to make its appearance. Next year I will skip the Scott's and purchase all of my lawn seed at Woods, since their seed is not supposed to have all of the annual grass seed in the mix.