Dan West Garden Center

May 2007 Newsletter

I wish I had a quarter for every time I've answered this question lately - "Are my crape myrtles dead?"  No.  Nothing got killed from the freeze unless you planted annuals or vegetables a little early.  Lots of plants had the tender new foliage killed and a few may be killed to the ground.  We probably lost most of the mophead hydrangea blossoms and our first round of roses, but the plants will be fine.  Crapes bloom on new wood so they'll still flower.  Some irises lost their flowers so you can cut out the mushy leaves and flower stalks.

Could you have done anything to prevent the damage?  Depends!  It depends on how cold it got where you live and the type of plant.  My crape myrtles at home are not bad, my big leaf magnolia looks really bad.  The crape myrtles at the Eads store got zapped; even the ones under cover lost their leaves which meant the temperature dropped to the mid 20's.  If it did where you live, then the only way to protect them would have been to add heat.  Christmas lights wrapped around the crape myrtle or Japanese maple and then covered with a sheet may have helped. Covering a tall plant for a night with a sheet or plastic, only protects it from frost or wind desiccation, it gets just as cold inside the cover as outside.

Low growing plants covered with plastic or a sheet would have probably retained enough heat from the soil to have not been damaged, but if you use plastic, don't let it touch the plants because frost on the plastic will kill what's underneath.

So what do you do now?  Nature will shortly tell you how far back you may need to prune.  If you do nothing, in 60 days you probably wouldn't be able to tell what happened (except the lack of hydrangea flowers).  If it will make you feel better to strip the foliage off the crape myrtle, then go ahead.

That's the good news.  Now the bad.  Remember I said nothing died, but many things may be stressed by the late freeze in combination with a very, very dry winter.  So it is critical to keep your garden watered through this growing season and fertilized this month with a good fertilizer like Plant-tone.  We want to prevent additional stress because stressed plants are more prone to insect and disease problems.  Remember deep, thorough watering is better than daily shallow watering.

One plant in particular to watch...true boxwoods.  We have a nasty habit of planting boxwoods with azaleas and they are incompatible plants.  Azaleas like a soil that's 10 times more acidic than ideal boxwood soil, so check the pH around the boxwoods.  It should be 6.5 on boxwoods, 5.5 on azaleas.  To complicate matters further, the vast majority of people that bring me a piece of their dying boxwood, don't have a boxwood.  They have Japanese hollies.   They look the same to most people, so before you add lime, make sure you have true boxwoods.

Here's some bad news...I'm seeing a lot of fire blight this year.  But here's the good news...we now have a product  that can be sprayed up to the day of harvest to help suppress fire blight on apples and pears.  It's actually a bacteria (QST 713 strain of Bacillus subtilis) and it also works on black spot and powdery mildew on roses, leaf spot on photinia, early and late blight on tomatoes.  It's labeled for use on leafy vegetables, grapes, cucumbers, peppers, annuals, perennials, tropical plants, all shrubs and trees.  Some diseases it cures, some it suppresses, but it's the first in-season spray we've had.  I'd still use agricultural streptomycin on plants prone to fire blight as a dormant spray prior to bud swell, but it's nice now to have a follow up spray for in season use.  The product...Serenade.  It's best to remove as much infected tissue as possible and the disease will have progressed several inches lower than what appears damaged, so cut 8-10 inches below the brown foliage and sterilize you cutting tool with alcohol or bleach after each cut so as not to pass the disease further down the plant. 

Fire blight is caused by a bacterium, Erwinia amylovora.  When it attacks a plant,  it releases a protein called "harpin".  Plants "sense" harpin protein and immediately begin thickening their cell walls in self defense.  Some really smart people at Cornell University figured out how to genetically modify E. coli to produce large amounts of harpin.  Spray your plants with harpin and they become more vigorous and more resistant to diseases.  Messenger is the name of the product and it can be used on roses, flowers, fruits, vegetables, herbs, trees, shrubs and turf.  The more vigorous the plant, the less likely your plant will be attacked by insects and diseases. 

I'm also seeing a lot of scale on mature trees.  The quickest cure for very tall trees is Acephate in a bullet form.  Simply drill holes according to label directions, insert the bullet and you are done.  It's quick, just a matter of days and gives you about a month's control for all insects, but one application should reduce your scale population to levels your tree can live with.  For season-long control, we have Pointer Insecticide.  Applied the same way by drilling holes,  it's a pre-measured liquid you squirt into the hole.  It lasts longer, but takes longer to get to the top and is best applied early in the season.  For pine tip moths or for any conifer problem, I'd use the Acephate. Both of these products also control borers, beetles, leafhoppers, leafminers, mealybugs, whiteflies, aphids and adelgids.  Neither product is approved for fruit or nut bearing trees.

Got grubs?  Now is an excellent time to control them as they move to the surface to feed, emerge or lay eggs.  For a quick kill, use Dylox.  It kills in 24 hours, but has virtually no residual.  For preventative or season long control, use Halofenozide (Hi Yield Kill-A-Grub) or Imidacloprid and now is a great time to apply.

What about Milky Spore for grub control?  Well it works great when applied several times over a couple of years to control the grub of the Japanese beetle.  But...we don't have Japanese beetles here.  We have June beetles which according to St. Gabriel Laboratories are not controlled by Milky Spore.  Great product...just not for Memphis.  If you'd like to call and ask them yourself, their number is 1-800-801-0061.  That said, we have customers that have used it and swear by it.  So...we do offer it for sale for those of you who want to use it.

Have you seen the koi and goldfish at the Highway 64 store?  We have several sizes and grades of koi, butterfly koi, shubunkins, sarassa comets and just plain old goldfish.

DAN WEST GARDEN CENTERS

4763 POPLAR            12061 HWY 64

MEMPHIS, TN 38117    EADS, TN 38028

901-767-6743            901-867-2283

KENNETH MABRY - MANAGER          JIM CROWDER - MANAGER