|
|||||||
|
December 13, 2006 Ants in the Garden, Ants in the House It happens every year. Hordes of ants invade my kitchen when it’s cold and wet outside. They enter my home in search of food, water and shelter. Hold the panic button! A good cleanup and barriers can reduce household ant populations while still allowing ants to play their important and useful part in the environment. Ants help control insect populations including termites (they think termite eggs are a nutritious treat). They are scavengers and an important part of the cycle of decomposition, breaking down organic materials to enrich our soil. Ants that nest in soil help turn and aerate it as much as earthworms. Identify the type of ant you have and make sure it is not a termite. Ants are often confused with termites, especially during swarming when winged ant forms are mistaken for winged termites. Ants have narrow waists and bent antennae. Termites have broad abdomens with no waist and straight, beaded antennae. Ants’ hind wings are smaller than front wings. Termites have front and hind wings the same size. The most common problem ant in our area is the dark brown 1/8-inch long, Argentine ant (Linepithema humile). Ants belong to the insect order Hymenoptera and are close relatives of bees and wasps. We usually see worker ants, the most numerous of the three castes: worker, queen and male. Sprays don’t work Since only a small amount of an ant colony's workers forage at any one time, pesticide sprays and dusts leave most of a colony intact and actually worsen the problem, causing the colony to split into multiple colonies. Indoor remedies: clean, exclude and bait After thouroughly cleaning and frequently wiping counters for several days, the kitchen ants have moved on to greener pastures. As long as they stay out of my kitchen I can coexist with these fascinating and beneficial insects. Use a spray bottle filled with soapy water to wipe down kitchen and food storage surfaces and remove ant scent markers: chemical trails left by scout worker ants. Store food in screw top jars or other tightly sealed containers. If you must leave pet food out, create a moat by setting your pet’s food dish inside a shallow plate filled with water. If you can’t wash dishes immediately, rinse, then soak them in soapy water. Dispose of food waste and clean trash containers daily. To eliminate an indoor nest, suck ants up in a HEPA vacuum and dispose of the bag immediately. Borate, Borax or boric acid can be helpful if used properly and only when needed. Mop floors with one cup of borax per gallon of hot water. Make your own fresh borax or boric acid baits with 1 teaspoon (or less) of boric acid, one tablespoon of honey and one tablespoon peanut butter. Put in small vials or lids where you have seen ants. There are commercial baits that contain borate or boric acid. Keep all baits out of the reach of children, pets and wildlife. Close visible entry holes with caulking. Fix leaky faucets, eliminate standing water. Check flower pots for ant colonies. Water indoor plants well and if ants are visible, flush them out of the soil with water or move them outside. Outdoor remedies Keep wood piles away from the house. Trim shrubs and all plant material away from the outside of the house. Prune branches that are touching the ground or other trees. Ants are attracted to scale insects and aphids and milk them for their sugary honeydew. Control the scale or aphids and use sticky barriers such as “Tanglefoot” around the base of trees. Resources Marin Master Gardeners Help Desk in Novato, (415) 499-4204 UC Online Integrated Pest Management Program “Pest Notes,” http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/ Sign up for the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides monthly newsletter of helpful tips at http://www.pesticide.org/
November 29, 2006
Simply defined, allelopathy is a plant interaction through chemicals released by one plant into the environment that can harm or benefit another plant. It can involve plant chemical reactions with mycorrhizae (soil fungus) or nutrients. Another good example is the Black Walnut, native to eastern North America and plentiful in my neighborhood. It produces a substance called juglone that interferes with plants in the nightshade family (such as tomatoes), causing wilting and yellowing foliage. On the other hand, fescue grass is allelopathic to the Black Walnut. November 22, 2006 Giving Thanks, Saying Goodbye A touch of frost and yellow leaves appear overnight on the Texas umbrella tree. Birds pop out from the leaves, hang upside-down from branches, tap wet earth in search of seeds and insects. My broken bones have healed and I can hike again. I’m walking, walking, walking the St. Francis Church labyrinth. I’m saying goodbye to Fred Santangelo, my children’s first generation Italian-American grandfather, WWII veteran, golfer and Mojave desert gardener who died this Veteran’s Day. It’s a gray day with scudding mashed potato clouds. When I reach the labyrinth center and pause, the clouds part for a deep patch of turquoise sky, sunlight graces a rolling hilltop in the distance. The first Thanksgiving in America was a feast before the long eastern winter settled in. It consisted of seasonal autumn bounty, organic and locally grown . In Novato, we gather in the last tomatoes, clean up and plant winter crops in our year-round vegetable gardens. Two very different cultures collided in New England of the 1600s. For a brief time they shared common cause along with common ground. As one of thousands of descendants of Miles Standish, a Mayflower passenger who settled at Plymouth, I approach the history with mixed emotions. He was considered short of stature, short tempered, a fierce mercenary soldier and commander. He formed alliances with indigenous leaders and also killed many native people. The lasting harvest of our melting pot country is its people, its diverse, intertwined, intermarried cultures, something the early European settlers could not have foreseen. If my heritage is a “Heinz 57” variety, my children’s is even more varied. Many of the WWII generation of Americans that are passing grew up on self-sustaining farms as Fred did before he moved to a small city in Ohio. Today we reconsider the notion of sustainability as it applies to an increasingly urbanized world. We learn the hidden costs of transporting mass produced food and increasingly value seasonal, organic, locally produced food. The baton passes from one generation to the next. We consider what is best to take with us on our continued journey. We plant in remembrance of others, perhaps a single long-lived tree to help heal the earth or their favorites whether hot chile peppers, roses or hollyhocks. Our hollyhocks in our garden grow from seeds from Papa Fred’s flowers. My Kansas farm-raised mother showed us how she used to turn hollyhock flowers inside out to make hollyhock fairies when she was a girl. The last time I saw Fred, an avid golfer, his favorite occupation was watching the hummingbirds and finches that came to feeders at his window by his bedside. He asked the children to sit by him while I pruned his beloved roses that bloomed in the same window in the brutal, sun-drenched desert climate. We give thanks every day, though some are given so much and some have so little. We hope one day to leave the earth when our days are long in number with people we love around us. Whatever we are given, we are grateful for our brief passage on planet earth and those moments when we can enjoy tumbling clouds that part on turquoise skies.
November 15, 2006 Number 7 in the list of top 10 Stupid Garden Mistakes Anyone Could Make: Removed mature scale-infested citrus without trying alternatives Investigate alternatives before you remove sick or infested plants Part of a continuing series of columns: Number 7 in the list of top 10 Stupid Garden Mistakes Anyone Could Make: Removed mature scale-infested citrus without trying alternatives How sick or infested are your plants? Fully investigate Integrated (intelligent) Pest Management (IPM) options before you remove plants or apply pesticide. When I became the owner of an established garden I inherited its problems as well as its blessings and inwardly groaned because the landscaping had been neglected. Anyone could see there was a great deal of work ahead. The previous owner seemed enamored of cactus, rose and citrus varieties with more and longer thorns than I thought possible. Cactus and many roses were given away or moved to the middle of perennial beds where they would present less danger to our two small children. I took a hard look at a 10-foot tall row of citrus. I like citrus fruit, adore their fragrant flowers and appreciated the screen their glossy green leaves provided. Citrus are particularly vulnerable to scale and I did spot scale and ant “scale farmers.” Scale are often first noticed as nail-head sized brown bumps clustered along stems. In their young form they may be white, transparent or green and can still move on minute legs. Mealybug is somewhat similar and appears as white, flattened bumps that form cottony clusters. I worked in the plant business for a number of years and had seen the damage scale infestation can do. I thinned out the plants, sprayed them off with soapy water and waited through winter and spring. No flowers whatsoever, more scale, more ants. Since traditional pesticides can’t eliminate scale which spreads easily to nearby plants, I was very cavalier about cutting the infested citrus down. Here are three IPM methods I wish I’d tried first: 1. After a positive bug identification, natural predators such as parasitic wasps or mealybug destroyers could have been introduced. 2. Remove the ant scale farmers. Ants help to spread scale. Regular hosing off with mildly soapy water will often be enough to discourage them. 3. Non-toxic horticultural or dormant oils will smother scale and mealybug. Don’t apply the oil unless you have a severe problem. Horticultural oil also smothers beneficial bugs and bug predators that eat scale and mealybugs.
Oxygen is provided by the mix of coarse and fine textured material and monthly turning.
Termite Solutions February 22, 2006 Easy care Summer Bulbs Splendid golden joy, a host of daffodils dance in the breeze. As leaves begin to fade, leave them on, to build up photosynthized food harvested from sunlight that it stores in the bulb for next year. Remove dried foliage when it pulls away easily. Summer blooming bulbs can be planted now. Be adventurous and try a few new varieties this year. Follow planting instructions carefully especially for water and drainage. Keep your summer-dry climate bulbs separate from your summer-water bulbs. If they are successful they will return year after year with little or no effort on your part. Deer or gopher resistant bulbs Planting flowers and bulbs is like setting out hors d’oervres for deer and gopher. You can grow your treasured bulbs in gopher cages or screen-lined flower beds or you can choose resistant plants. These plants generally have sharp flavors or may be poisonous. Ornamental allium, full sun lovers in the onion family, can be found in many sizes. Six-inch blue-flowered A. cyaneum perfect for rock gardens, two-foot tall lilac-flowered Christophii (Star of Persia) to four-feet tall A. giganteum with six-inch wide blue pom-poms may bloom from early to mid-summer. Most allium flowers are blues, reds and whites. After blooming, their flower stalks dry as pale star shapes that can be used in dried arrangements. They will naturalize and may need to be controlled. Allium make excellent border plants and will grow in almost any kind of soil. Amaryllis belladonna has proven a hardy survivor of poor soil and dry summers and is found along fence lines and the foundations of old California homesteads. Its wide strappy leaves die back to the ground in late spring. When the ground is at its dryest, it pokes flower stems out of the ground that announce waning summer when they open. We call its sweetly fragrant hot-pink trumpets “naked ladies.” Hemericallis Daylilies Summer water: Tuberous begonias, canna, gladiolus, dahlia and lilium February 15 2006 Success With Seeds Cool weather, fast maturing seeds such as lettuce radish and bok choy can be planted directly in the ground. Warm season plants such as tomatoes and peppers should be started indoors in pots or flats. Counting back from Mother’s Day planting, we arrive at late February early March as an ideal time for seed starting of summer vegetables and annuals. Successful seed starting has four basic requirements: healthy seeds; sterile planting medium (soil); even moisture; warm sunny location with plenty of air circulation. Seed viability Viability is the percentage of seeds that will germinate (sprout). A few simple tips make a big difference. Start off with new seed packs purchased from a garden center or nursery. They have selected seeds that will be most successful for our area and have high viability rates. Your seed packs left from last season will not be as viable. The old stand-bys such as Burpee, Thompson & Morgan or Parks are good choices. Renee’s Garden Seeds, (www.reneesgarden.com) are grown in Northern California and feature cottage and heirloom organics. Territorial Seeds (www.territorial-seed.com) are grown in the Pacific Northwest and include a huge selection of Asian vegetables, peppers and heirloom tomatoes. Seeds of Change (www.seedsofchange.com) are organically grown and open-pollinated. Native Seed/SEARCH (www.nativeseeds.org) features Native American traditional and heritage plants well-suited to hot, dry climates. If you can’t find them in stores, there is still time to order online. Sterile well-drained growing medium Whatever mix you choose to use make sure it is sterile and drains well. The soil or potting medium has been heated to kill bacteria and fungus. You will be keeping the medium evenly moist and warm which is a perfect environment for nurturing damping-off fungus. This appears as rotted patches of seedlings in a flat or a dark shriveled area at the base of the seedling stem. Make sure your containers, tools and hands are clean as well. After sprouting, young seedlings are vulnerable to bacteria which may first appear as black spots on the leaves. Sterilized potting soil, peat moss, vermiculite or perlite are all good for seed starting. Start seeds in paper cups or peat pots and you can plant them directly in the garden without disturbing their roots. Even moisture The growing medium should be kept evenly moist but not wet. A seedling does not need or use a lot of water. Too much or too little water equals seedling death. Too much water will suffocate the roots, cause roots to rot or encourage the growth of bacteria and fungus. Not enough water will cause the seeds and seedlings to dry out. Commercial nurseries have overhead misting systems. Recreate the same effect by watering the growing medium well before planting, allow it to drain, then water as needed with a misting bottle. I use a mini-greenhouse tray with a clear fitted top, lift the lid regularly and remove the lid when seeds have sprouted. Make one using a baking tray covered with plastic wrap or a sheet of glass for a lid. Warm sunny location Commercial propagators have the advantage of heated planting beds and unlimited sunlight. You can choose a warm spot in the house, near but not on a heater or in a sunny window. Give them plenty of air circulation and protect from baking sunlight, you don’t want to cook your seeds or seedlings.
January 25, 2006 Cut back Ornamental Grasses and Woody Perennials While you are shopping for bareroot roses and fruit trees or contemplating where to add one more camellia, be on the lookout for bargains on ornamental grasses and perennials at local nurseries or garden centers at this time of year. The gardener may use ornamental grasses as accents in perennial beds, they may cascade down a hillside, provide a backdrop for summer color, create a screen, line a pathway or soften a rock garden. Short bunchgrasses are included as part of a meadow plan and may be useful for an interesting, uneven lawn area. Easy care plants, they add texture and contrast to the landscape and can be successful in containers. Many ornamental, feather or bunchgrasses that were bronzed and gilded in their fall glory are, in late January, the epitome of sadness; limp and beaten by the rains. Cold nights have nipped penstemon and salvias and left black leaves and shriveled stems behind. Look closely at the base of the plant clumps. There you will see bunch grasses sprouting bright shoots and small buds forming below blackened stems. You may be tempted to rip out these pathetic remains. Instead, dig out your clean, sharp pruning shears and cutting knives and go to work. Woody perennials should be cut back at least two-thirds while still somewhat dormant. Leave a bit of green growth at the bottom and do not cut into hard wood or they may not grow back. If you don’t cut back perennials such as penstemon, they will thin out in the middle and stems will break off. If you delay and cut back late in the season you will be cutting off their spring blooms. Tattered and faded bunch grasses should be sheared back to the level of new growth. You will be amazed at how fast they grow back. Some grasses may need shearing every winter, others may need cutting back every third or fourth year such as Mulenbergia rigens (deergrass). Perhaps you have short tufts of festuca (blue and red fescue) that require a little clean up beneath and between their clumps or shoulder high Calamagrostis foliosa (leafy reedgrass) that should be cut back and renewed every two years. If you’d like to learn more about the types and cultivation of California native grasses, sedges and rushes look for the book “Wild Lilies, Irises and Grasses: Gardening with the California Monocots” published by UC Press. The writers demystify some of the confusion that surrounds the various classifications and naming conventions of grasses and makes it possible to match the most successful native ornamental grass for your soil, light and water conditions. Novato photographer Saxon Holt’s work is featured. Non-native ornamental grasses are not recommended for use near open space. Some popular varieties can become invasive such as the delicate, pale Nasella tenuisama (Mexican feather grasses), tall stipas, glorious striped or dark green sprays of Miscanthus. These may be appear green year round yet still require some thinning out. Cut them back hard to renew. Pennisetum fountain grasses have different needs. Pennisetum setaceum (purple fountain grass) may die back completely, but look for it to send up new shoots if it hasn’t already. The best idea book for landscaping with ornamental grasses is “Grasses: Versatile Partners for Uncommon Garden Design” by Nancy Ondra with captivating photos by Saxon Holt. From cultural basics to design planning, many popular non-natives and natives are photographed in the landscape and in closeup. January 18, 2006 A pomegranate question |
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
