Category: The Gardening Guy

Most species aren’t as bad as you think

It’s spring, and insects are hatching, flying and munching. Contrary to what you may think, most are not a problem for your garden. There are over a million named insect species and many — perhaps most — coevolved with flowering plants. They pollinate our crops and do many wonderful things for us.

One of the most hated insects is the Japanese beetle. These beetles, as the name suggests, are originally from Japan and were first observed in New Jersey in 1916. In just over 100 years they have become omnipresent in the eastern United States. Why? They have very few natural predators — even birds don’t want to eat them.

As larvae these pests generally live in lawns, feeding on grass roots. They are whitish grubs of various sizes but up to an inch long. If you cut open a square foot of lawn with a sharp shovel and peel back the sod, you are likely to see a grub or two. If you count 10 or more in that sample, you have an infestation that will be a problem.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture developed a remedy in the 1940s called milky spore, which is a bacterium that can be suspended in water and sprayed on lawns. It is not a miracle cure and is quite expensive. Not all entomologists believe that milky spore is an effective cure, at least not in New England, where cold winters can kill the bacterium.

Not only that, those darn Japanese beetles fly. So you can treat your lawn with milky spore only to have your neighbor’s beetles fly over the fence to attack your roses. I did talk to an enterprising gardener once who convinced her neighbors to treat, too, and she feels it made a significant reduction in beetle numbers.

What else can you do? There are beneficial nematodes (unsegmented worms) called Hb nematodes that will attack Japanese beetle larvae and are said to be 96 percent effective in eliminating Japanese beetle and rose chafer larvae if applied properly. The best time to apply these nematodes is July and August, when the grubs are feeding in your lawn. If you buy them, follow the directions carefully: They need to be applied to moist lawn at dusk and then watered in. These are live worms, and as such need to be used soon after purchase. They are not generally available at garden centers, but are available online.

What about those Japanese beetle traps? Give them to neighbors you don’t like. They attract lots of beetles but only capture some — so they attract more hungry beetles to your property if you use them. Really, just don’t buy them.

I am a firm believer that the best method of insect control for most bad bugs is hand-picking them and dropping in soapy water. Insects often have several life cycles in a summer, so try to reduce numbers before they reproduce.

Hand-picking works for potato bugs, for example, if you check your plants early in the season, before large numbers have appeared. Look under the leaves: if you see orange egg masses, scrape them off and drown them in soapy water, along with the beetles and larvae. If you grow too many potatoes for hand-picking bugs, try something called “Bt”, another beneficial bacterium. It is readily available at garden centers. It does not act as a contact poison, but sickens the larvae so they stop feeding and don’t reach adulthood.

My insect nemesis is the striped cucumber beetle. It is a small striped beetle that can devour an entire small plant in one night. It eats not only cucumber leaves, but anything in that family including squashes and pumpkins. I do two things to help prevent their destruction: I grow my seedlings in pots until they have three or four leaves so the beetles can’t kill the plant in one night. And I cover my plants with row covers (breathable garden fabric) to physically keep those darn beetles off the leaves. Which is not to say that they can’t come up under the covers through the soil, but the method does help. And when the blossoms come, I’ll have to remove the row covers to allow pollination.

Can you create habitat for beneficial insects? Sure. Don’t manicure every inch of your garden. Leave a few dead branches or decomposing flower stems in piles at the edge of your property. Allow fallen leaves to serve as mulch. Consider putting up a simple structure for solitary wasps (such as those that control those pesky tomato hornworms). They are sold next to the birdhouses at the garden center.

I’m afraid that mosquitoes, black flies and deer ticks have given all insects a bad name, but most are beneficial. They pollinate, serve as food for baby birds, they help to keep vigorous plants and other insects from taking over. And please remember this: If you decide that spraying pesticides is easier than the organic methods described here, know that those same sprays will kill small beneficial insects that you probably never even notice.

Featured photo: Catch Japanese beetles with a milk jug and soapy water. Courtesy photo.

Now’s the time to buy your strawberry plants

Traditionally, June is the month for eating strawberries. But you can, in fact, grow varieties of strawberries that produce berries all summer, or that produce berries in June and again in the fall. In any case, now is the time to buy your strawberry plants before they are all sold out.

There are three basic types of strawberries: June-bearing strawberries, so-called ever-bearing strawberries, and day-neutral strawberries. Plant June-bearing berries this summer, and you will need to wait until next summer for your first berries (pick off any blossoms this year so they develop good roots). Ever-bearing berries are not really ever-bearing: they will deliver a load of fruit this fall, and again in future years in June and the fall. Day-neutral berries are not affected by day length and are truly ever-bearing. The first year, however, you will not get any June berries.

Strawberries are sold in clumps of bare root plants, usually 25 per bundle. They should be planted when the soil is at least 50 degrees, and when risk of hard frost has passed. A hard frost is one that is colder than 28 degrees and lasts for 12 hours or more.

You can buy plants starting in early May at your local garden center or feed-and-grain store. You can also go online and order from seed companies, but many varieties were already sold out at Fedco Seeds and Johnny’s Selected Seeds when I checked in late April. Nourse Farms in Massachusetts prefers that you order in the fall but still had several varieties available when I checked.

All strawberries like rich, well-drained soil. If you have a heavy clay you will need to make raised beds and add lots of compost. Work the compost in with a fork or shovel to make the soil fluffier. Even average soil needs compost for best results, as does sandy soil. Sandy soil will hold moisture much better if you stir in plenty of compost.

You do not need to create wood-sided beds. Just mound up the soil to create a bed about 3 1/2 feet wide that is 4 to 6 inches taller than your walkways. For 25 plants, a wide bed 20 feet long should do. For day-neutral berries, you can plant two rows of plants 12 to 18 inches apart in a bed. June berries need more space, so plant just one row per bed, and space 18 to 24 inches. But always read the directions that come with the berries and space accordingly. Don’t crowd your plants or they will produce smaller berries.

I recommend the day-neutral berries. They do not require as much work as June-bearing plants, which send out runners that need to be rooted in or pinched off. The day-neutral plants stay in nice tidy clumps. And they produce berries all summer long, starting in the second year. Their berries are smaller than June berries, however.

Assuming you have just average soil, you should work in some minerals and fertilizer in addition to compost before planting the berries. Five pounds of an organic, slow-release fertilizer in a 20-foot-wide row should be adequate. A good organic bagged fertilizer will add the three most necessary minerals — nitrogen for green growth, phosphate for strong roots and good flowering, and potassium for strong cell walls and resistance to drought and cold.

Organic fertilizers also add other nutrients that do not come in a bag of chemical fertilizer, things like calcium, magnesium, sulfur, manganese, chlorine and iron. Organic fertilizers are made from things like seaweed, chicken manure, peanut hulls and cottonseed meal. These break down over time and supply nutrients to your plants.

There are a number of ways of planting your strawberries, but the main thing to focus on is getting good contact with the soil. To plant the berries, I smooth the soil surface, then dig shallow holes with small mounds of soil in the center of each. I spread out the roots over the mound, and then cover the roots with soil and pat it down. It’s important to not cover the crown (the growing point where the leaves begin).

An alternative way is to just cut a slice in the soil with a putty knife and push the roots into that slice with the putty knife. The crown needs to be at the soil surface, and the soil well-patted down. Nourse Farms (noursefarms.com) has a video on how to use that method.

After planting, water well and then water two or three times a week until they are well-established. All berries are high in water content, so don’t let the plants dry out if we have a drought again this summer.

Strawberries hate weeds, so always plant into a weed-free bed. Grasses will compete with your berries, reducing the size and number of your berries. One way to minimize the labor of weeding is to mulch well. I put down four to six sheets of newspaper over the soil between beds and cover it with straw, mulch hay or dry leaves.

Strawberries are a relatively easy crop to grow and will reward you nicely. Most varieties will come back for a few years, but eventually they lose vigor. Still — strawberry shortcake anyone?

Featured photo: Day neutral strawberries first picking. Courtesy photo.

Which plants are making you sneeze

If you suffer from spring allergies, this would be a good time to know what plants are affecting your comfort. Right now, many trees are dumping their pollen. Most trees are wind-pollinated and produce lots of pollen. They depend on the wind to move pollen around — and up your nose.

Although some trees and shrubs produce both male and female flowers, many are dioecious, meaning that male and female flowers are on separate plants. It is thus to their advantage to produce their (insignificant-looking) flowers and lots of pollen before the leaves get in the way. Which for me is right now. Showy flowers do not necessarily mean that trees like catalpa are low on the aggravation index (they are rated 8 of 10 on the index), but others like magnolias are lower. Both of those are pollinated by insects.

Of the trees, male poplars are among the worst — and in my area, they are just starting to bloom. Other culprits include willows, birches, oaks and some maples, but not all. If you are buying trees, look for trees that have separate male and female plants (as opposed to both on one). Always buy the female specimen if you can, as it is the males that produce the pollen and cause the allergic reactions. Not all plant tags will tell you if the plant is male or female, but good nurseries may know.

Very popular in the landscape industry right now is the Hakuru nashiki willow. It has tri-colored (green, white and pink) leaves in June and is sold either as a multi-stemmed shrub or as a “standard.” Standards are created by grafting branches on the top of a straight, bare-of-branches stem that is generally about 4 feet tall. As far as I know, Hakuru nashiki willows are all female, so they do not create the pollen that a pussy willow produces.

Want a nice pussy willow? Not all are bad for the allergy-prone. It is worth consulting a book like Tom Ogren’s Allergy-Free Gardening that lists trees and flowers species by species (and often with cultivars) with their potential for making you miserable. Ogren’s book lists “Weeping Sally” as a pussy willow with the lowest rating for causing allergies, while the male forms of white willow are among the worst rated. Even so, many of the males are sold as named cultivars for decorative purposes.

Not all pollen is created equal. Each spring I notice all the yellow pollen dropped on my car by pine trees. Pines produce huge amounts of pollen, but it is waxy and not very irritating to your nasal membranes. And it’s heavy, so it doesn’t fly far.

After the trees do their thing, along come the grasses. The seven worst offenders are introduced species of grass, including orchard grass, bluegrasses and timothy grass, which is commonly grown for animal feed. Grasses are wind-pollinated, and their pollen can float long distances. Your lawn should not be a problem so long as you never let the grass get tall enough to blossom. But fungal spores in the lawn can cause allergic reactions and can be stirred up by mowing, so if you get hay fever, you have a good excuse to get your spouse or kid to do the mowing.

Flowers with flashy form generally are not significant allergy-producers. Tulips, delphinium and peonies are obviously trying to get attention. They are the flirts — and insect-pollinated. Others such as hostas are among those least likely to cause an allergic reaction.

According to Lucy Huntington in her book Creating a Low-Allergen Garden, members of the daisy family have flowers that are insect-pollinated, but their pollen is highly allergenic to most sufferers. Chrysanthemums, asters, marigolds and zinnias can bother folks with allergies. I suppose that is particularly the case if you enjoy sniffing their scents. She also suggests avoiding geraniums (Pelargonium hybrids), strawflowers, dahlia hybrids, foxglove, sunflowers, nicotiana and cosmos.

Huntington’s book is full of lists and suggestions for low-allergen plants. Here are some of her suggestions for plants suitable for people with pollen allergies:

Annuals: Snapdragons, petunias, annual phlox, scarlet sage, purple salvia, pansies, bacopa, California poppies, nasturtiums and verbena

Perennials: columbine, astilbe, bellflowers, bleeding heart, delphinium, daylilies, Siberian iris, peonies, oriental poppies, penstemon, garden phlox, Jacob’s ladder, hollyhocks, alliums, globe flower, lady’s mantle, coral bells, catnip, hosta, foamflower and periwinkle.

The good news is this: Pollen is generally released in the morning, and by evening much of it has settled down, so evening should be a better time to garden. And rain knocks the pollen out of the air, so run outside and pull weeds after a nice downpour. You don’t have to cut down the culprits, and wearing a Covid mask will help if pollen is really bugging you!

Featured photo: Catalpa blossoms are showy and insect-pollinated but still can cause hay fever. Courtesy photo.

Contemplating potential garden improvements

This is a good time to look carefully at your garden, and to decide what you might do to make it better. Spring is upon us, trees and shrubs are waking up in my garden, but perennials are still mostly dormant and woody plants are just beginning to leaf out. It is a good time to look at “the bones” of the garden and decide what needs to be done.

The bones of the garden are the trees, shrubs, stone walls, sculpture, water features and pathways. These are visible in winter, though often covered in snow. In summer they can become focal points, or almost disappear as flowering plants shout out for attention.

Each of us reacts to spaces a little differently. Some want an enclosed garden that is quiet and private. Others want a long view of the sea, a pond or a distant mountain. If you are lucky, you might be able to divide your garden up so that you enjoy more than one type of garden: sunny, shaded, private or open to the view of passers-by. If you have just a city lot, you may have to choose just one kind of garden to focus on.

Making a garden private means creating visual barriers. You can do that overnight by hiring a company to put up a wooden 8-foot fence. Your neighbors may not like this and walls are generally monochromatic and boring. Of course you can then grow vines up them, or plant trees and shrubs in front of them, but plants take time to fill in and disguise the fence or wall. Still, if you have a new puppy or a bouncy 4-year-old child, you may opt for the immediate enclosure provided by fencing.

Alternatively, you can plant trees. There are advantages to this: trees get bigger and better every year. They provide habitat and food for birds, pollinators and all sorts of small animals. They reduce water runoff. And although some require occasional pruning, most of Mother Nature’s trees do just fine on their own. Some are fast growing; others will just inch along, holding place without shading the understory.

The street side of your house is important. What you show the world says something about you. If you plant a tall hedge, it can send a signal to others that you wish to remain undisturbed. If you have just lawn, it says you are not a gardener. If you plant beds and islands of color, you are saying, “Welcome, and enjoy!” Of course, lawns are the easiest to maintain, especially if you accept my mantra, “If it’s green and you can mow it, it’s a lawn.” I love a few dandelions and love my clover, which fixes atmospheric nitrogen into the soil — it’s free fertilizer.

Trees and shrubs are important on the front lawn as much as in the gardens behind the house. You can break up the straight lines of driveway and front walk. When thinking through your plans, take a garden hose and curve it around to define spaces. Create beds with bump-outs, and drive stakes to indicate where you might add trees, and use shorter stakes to indicate shrubs. And instead of lawn between the trees, imagine groundcovers. It will soften the look of your home, and invite birds and pollinators. You can keep some lawn, just reduce its footprint.

What other bones can you add to your property? Stone is wonderful in all its forms. The simplest stone additions are just boulders or tall, narrow standing stones. One and done. Stone walls are delightful, but expensive.

You can also build a cairn — a pile of stones similar to the markers seen on mountain trails above the tree line. The key, if piling up stones to create a pyramid or cairn, is to ensure that each stone is resting on two stones below it. And be careful that when you touch a stone it does not tumble. The earth does move a bit with the seasons, so building a sturdy structure is important.

Water features are nice, too. A simple bird bath can add interest and provide water for insects and birds. I have a blue ceramic birdbath that adds color and height to a flower bed — even though the birds seem to ignore it. I was told to put a stone in the water for them to perch on, but even that has not lured them in. Of course, I have a brook nearby, so that is probably their choice instead.

Pathways are important to gardens. They can keep your shoes out of mud and protect the soil from erosion. Flat stones are great, as are pea stone and small gravel. Chipped branches or bark mulch can be used for walkways, too. Pathways naturally lead one forward to other parts of the garden. Grassy paths are simple, and work well so long as they are not worn bare by too much foot traffic.

So go outside and do some planning — even if it is too early to take much action now.

Henry is a garden designer living in Cornish Flat, N.H. He is the author of four gardening books. His website is Gardening-Guy.com. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.

Featured photo: A simple blue birdbath can add color and interest. Photo courtesy of Henry Homeyer.

How growing native trees and shrubs can help

By now birds are finding their own food and have less need for that sunflower seed we have been providing during the cold days of winter. Now, growing native trees and shrubs on our property can be a huge help to our bird friends.

It is not enough to put out birdhouses; we need to help birds find food for their chicks. The diet of baby birds is about 90 percent composed of caterpillars, which are high in the fat and protein that developing birds need to grow and be healthy. One clutch of chickadees can, according to entomologist Doug Tallamy, a Ph.D. researcher from the University of Delaware, consume 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars in the 16 days from hatching to fledging. And most parent birds continue to feed their chicks even after they have fledged.

In Tallamy’s new book, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, he explains that not all trees and shrubs are created equal. Those that evolved alongside the butterflies and moths are palatable to them. Those that were imported from Asia or Europe mostly are not of interest to them.

Most woody plants create toxins or bad-tasting chemicals to keep all sorts of animals from eating them, but caterpillars have developed ways to eat most native tree leaves — they have adapted to eat what was available to them.

Although caterpillars eat the leaves of our native plants, they rarely damage or defoliate their host plants. Tent caterpillars and a few other imported species will defoliate trees, but that’s rare. It’s just that most of us never notice the little holes chewed in the leaves that are supporting the caterpillars. In fact, I rarely notice caterpillars in the trees and shrubs at all, but our bird friends certainly do. They evolved along with the caterpillars and are genetically programmed to recognize them and bring them to their young, even birds that are seed eaters.

As Dr. Tallamy explains in the book, not all native plants are created equal. Some native species may only feed a few. Some, like our oaks, feed many hundreds of species of caterpillars. These “keystone species” are critical to supporting our wildlife. Five percent of the native species support over 70 percent of our lepidoptera, according to Tallamy.

So what plants are best to feed the caterpillars that support our birds?

According to Tallamy’s research, native oaks, cherries, willows, birches, poplars and elms are best, and goldenrods, asters and perennial sunflowers “lead the herbaceous pack.” The National Wildlife Federation’s Plant Finder website (nwf.org/NativePlantFinder) allows you to enter your zip code and see what plants are best for your zone, and how many pollinators are served by each.

Tallamy did a study in Portland, Oregon, and found that of 1,176 trees he identified on the streets there, 91.5 percent were from other continents or ecoregions, mainly Asia. What does that mean? Portland is a pretty city with lots of trees, but it is largely a wasteland for caterpillars that feed our baby birds. The birds need to nest where they can get food for their young.

If you wish to improve your landscape and plant native species that will support wildlife, think about reducing lawn size. Tallamy explains that there are 40 million acres of lawn in America, an area the size of New England. Thirty percent of our water is used to water lawns, and 40 to 60 percent of all fertilizer ends up in our waterways and drinking water, he wrote.

Doug Tallamy proposes that we all join him in creating a “Homegrown National Park” by reducing our lawns by 50 percent and growing native plants. This will create wildlife corridors and improve our environment in many ways. The plants will sequester carbon in ways that lawn does not. It will help to save endangered species of insects and birds. It will reduce pollution of our air and water.

According to one study, in newer housing developments lawn covers about 92 percent of space not covered with driveways and buildings. If we were all willing to reduce our lawns and add trees, shrubs and native perennials, that would make a big difference in helping to reduce species extinction of lepidoptera, birds and small mammals. It does not require eliminating lawn, just reducing it. Think of lawn as area rugs, not wall-to-wall carpeting.

What else can you do to help our birds? Add a water feature. Even a small pool with a recirculating pump will attract birds, especially migrating birds that need sustenance for their long journey.

Instead of lawn, add native groundcovers. Lawns get compacted by lawnmowers, making it difficult for caterpillars and native bees to burrow in the ground. Most caterpillars pupate in the ground or in leaf litter, but lawns are not suitable. Other than honeybees, most bees burrow into the ground or into decaying wood to lay their eggs and hatch their young.

You can go to homegrownnationalpark.org to register your property as part of this movement.

Featured photo: Bird houses are nice, but we need to do more for our baby birds, including growing native plants. Photo courtesy of Henry Homeyer.

Frost, soil, drainage and other considerations

I know some gardeners who plant their potatoes or tomatoes in the garden on the same day every year. Not me. I think planting time is best based not only on the last frost date in your garden, but also on the soil temperature and up-to-date weather predictions. And of course late frosts do occur unexpectedly and can wipe out your tomato or pepper seedlings. So don’t jump the gun.

The internet has many guides and suggestions for when you should plant, but I think an experienced next-door neighbor probably has a better sense of when to plant. So, for example, one internet source says the last frost for Cornish Flat is May 15, while another internet source says June 11 to June 20. That’s over a month of difference!

My vegetable garden is in a low spot, with hills on either side. Cold air slides downhill, so I am cautious about planting too early. Often there is a late frost in my garden, but not around my house, which is 15 or 20 feet uphill. Rivers, lakes and the ocean can have a warming effect, too. The closer you are to the Connecticut River or the Atlantic Ocean, the sooner you can plant.

It is often thought that a full moon will cause late frosts. But a friend of mine used the frost data his mother had collected over decades and compared it to the phases of the moon. He observed that the moon does not seem to affect frost dates.

Soil temperature is important, too. Seeds are genetically programmed not to germinate if the soil is too cold. That makes sense: Seedlings are tender and many can be damaged by frost. So you can plant spinach or pea seeds “as early as you can work the soil,” according to the package, but they may not germinate for weeks if the soil is cold — and they may rot.

Seeds can rot in cold, wet soil. Corn seeds are particularly susceptible to rot, and many are treated with fungicides to prevent rotting. But as organic gardeners, we should avoid treated seeds.

If you are in a hurry, you can warm up the soil. First, rake off any fall leaves or other mulch from your garden beds. That will allow the sun to warm the soil, and air to evaporate some of the melted snow and spring rains that make the soil soggy.

Raised beds help with drainage. My vegetable garden is near a stream and the water table is high, especially in spring, when it is occasionally flooded. Each fall I shape my beds for spring, raking soil into the beds before covering them with leaves. In the spring I rake the leaves into the walkways, but after the soil has warmed up in mid-June I will put down hay and newspapers around my plants.

If you want to warm the soil and kill any annual weeds that start growing early in the season, you can cover the soil with clear plastic. If you get what is called “4-mil” plastic, you can reuse it. Flimsy stuff sold to painters is not usually reusable. Be sure to pin down the edges, or better yet, put soil or boards over the edges to keep wind from lifting the plastic and cooling the soil.

On a sunny day the temperature under the plastic can exceed 100 degrees, “solarizing” weeds and killing them. Perennial weeds and grasses will have their tops browned, but it will not kill the roots unless you do this for a long time.

So what seeds can you plant early? Spinach, peas, lettuce can be planted 3 to 6 weeks before last frost. In the fall I let a few lettuce plants flower and go to seed. Those seeds fall on the soil and start up much earlier than I plant any lettuce. But I also start lettuce indoors to get nice-sized plants in the ground in May for early eating. Carrots, beets, onion sets and radishes can go in the ground a week or two before last frost.

Tomato, pepper and squash family seedlings I plant in mid-June, well after last frost because I want the soil to reach at least 60 degrees before planting. Because I am bothered by a beetle that eats my cukes and squash I start those indoors instead of by seed outdoors. When the vines are about 6 inches long I plant them outdoors. By then they will survive any beetle munching.

Before planting any seedling outdoors, be sure to harden off the plants. That means to start putting the seedlings outdoors a few hours a day and increasing their exposure over the period of a week or so. You should do this for store-bought seedlings, too, as they have probably been protected from sunburn and windburn inside a greenhouse. But ask at the nursery if they are hardened off.

You can protect seedlings from light frost by covering them with something called row cover, Reemay, or Agribon. These are spun agricultural fabrics that come in 5-foot-wide swaths that you can cut to fit your rows. Unlike plastic sheeting, this stuff breathes and allows moisture to pass through it. Buy the wires sold to support it and form hoops over your plants. It will also keep bugs off your plants, but you need to remove it when vine crops start to bloom — they are insect pollinated.

The more you garden, the more you know. But we never know exactly when a late killing frost will come. So I am always the last on the block to get my garden planted — but my plants catch up.

Featured photo: Row cover with hoops helps to keep insects off and keep plants warm. Photo by Henry Homeyer.