Rose Garden Pests

Archive for February, 2010

Organic gardening tips – Part 1

February 6th, 2010

With a resurgence in environmental awareness and a desire to live “green,” more and more gardeners are turning to organic gardening. Whether you want to reduce your exposure to toxic pesticides and herbicides, help birds and butterflies, or grow healthy produce, organic gardening is the way to go.

But where to start?

Too many people figure that to go organic, they should just stop using garden chemicals and all will be well. When their corn patch is overrun with corn borers, or the grubs wreak havoc on their lawn, or the roses keel over from black spot, they throw up their hands in frustration and cry, “Organic gardening doesn’t work!”

The thing is, organic gardening isn’t only about what you stop doing. It’s a whole different way of gardening. It’s about creating a healthy community, and sometimes requires reconstructing your garden from the ground up. Literally.

START WITH THE SOIL

The key to a healthy garden is healthy soil. Too often we think of soil as some kind of inert medium for roots to anchor themselves in. In fact, in healthy soil there’s a complex chemistry that goes on between plant roots, soil microbes, and soil particles. Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis explore soil science in their terrific book, Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web. By “teaming” up with soil that is “teeming” with microbes, the organic gardener creates the healthy environment necessary to prevent many soil-borne pests and diseases. The authors recommend compost, compost, and more compost to create a healthy soil food web.

Once your soil is well-enriched with compost and composted animal manure, retain the best soil texture by throwing away the rototiller. Keep hand cultivation to a minimum as well. Excessive cultivation disturbs friendly soil microbes and allows pathogens to move in. Mulch with compost, shredded leaves, straw, or wood chips enriched with a little nitrogen to feed the soil food web and continue building humus. The soil fungi that “brown” mulches like these encourage help keep disease-causing fungi, bacteria, and nematodes in check.

MIX IT UP

Sure, planting large blocks of broccoli makes harvesting easier. But it’s also like spreading out a welcome mat for the cabbage butterfly and saying, “C’mon in! And bring the kids!” Long rows of corn, beans, cabbage, tomatoes, or even roses are exactly what the pests look for when they’re hunting for dinner or for a good place to lay their eggs.

Keep the pests guessing

Organic gardening tips – Part 2

February 6th, 2010

Organic Gardening is a very large topic to cover however the key elements to any organic garden would have to be the harmony and balance between mother and earth without the use of commercial “foreign” substances.

To avoid pests and disease amongst your garden some practices to implement easily would be companion planting. This process involves the use of different plants to both help one to thrive and to avoid a particular pest. Most common companion plants would be the Rose and the Garlic. This is because the garlic deters aphids from attacking the Rose. However the use of incorrect companion’s can have a devastating affect as the allelopathic results are negative. An example of this would be garlic (allium family) with beans and peas (legume family)

An easy solution until you master the art of which plant love to love and hate each other a simple mixture of garlic/chili and water boiled together and put in a spray bottle will help protect against many bugs.

A great resource to the organic garden would be either home grown compost from your own heap or if you are impatient like me a worm farm set up for composting and added to the garden for aerating the soil. The worm farm will produce very nutrient rich castings great for most garden situations.

Now for the dreaded weeds. well that is a matter of personal opinion as many weeds can be used for human consumption. However a great weed mat would be a think layer of newspaper , mulch or simply man power to remove and add into the worm farm or compost heap.

Great liquid fertilizer to use whilst you wait for the compost would be some kind of manure in barrel of water and then tapped out onto the garden after it matures. For best result with this the manure need to settle/soak with the water for about a week minimum and not used as the only water substitute as it will be concentrated.

You also have seaweed if you are by such a source. That is not to say go and raid the ocean and it is not advised as an entire combination due to the saline content.

Bird deterrents if the fruit and vegetables are getting attacked old Cd’s that are scratched make a fabulous reflector. Don’t forget to check out recycle co ops as they have some very useful alternatives to creating seedling trays. etc.

I could add to this for hours however too much to absorb will get you beyond the realm of small steps to crawl into this fabulous way of gardening.

Five Rose Garden Ideas

February 5th, 2010

If youve always shied away from growing roses because you believed their press, its time to put away your misconceptions. Far from being the finicky, pest-ridden creatures that theyre made out to be, roses are surprisingly easy to grow and maintain. Roses have five basic needs:

Plenty of sun! With very few exceptions, roses love the sun. Choose a spot for them that gets at least six full hours of sun per day, and theyll reward you with beautiful, showy blooms.

Lots of Water! Roses are thirsty little critters, too. Plan on giving your rose garden a good daily drenching to supplement rain and add a second if rain is scarce.

Control Pest-y Critters! Roses ARE prone to attract pesky bugs like Japanese beetles and aphids. There are all sorts of natural treatments if you object to a weekly-or-so spraying with a pesticide designed for roses. On the flip side the only time that I saw major problems with infestations were my grandmothers prize blue-blood strains. Hybrids and ramblers seem not to be bothered much at all.

Feed them! Youll get more, fuller and more colorful blooms if you feed your roses once a month with a good, balanced fertilizer.

Pick your roses! Seriously roses love to be pruned and groomed. The more you pick your roses, the more youll get.

So have you got a spot in your yard that gets at least six hours of sun a day, is close enough to the garden hose that watering is easy, and is easily accessible by paths and walkways? In that case you have a great spot for a rose garden.

A few ideas for rose garden designs you might not have considered are:

A Rose Fence Garden

Climbing and rambling roses are ambitious climbers. You can completely cover a chain link fence with a plant every 2-3 feet. Start with bare-stemmed root stock, and train new growth along the chain links and support frames. Within 3-4 years, youll have a full wall of blossoming roses.

A Corner Rose Garden

Got a bare, sunny corner in your yard? Its the perfect spot for a climbing rose garden. Start with a few large boulders or rocks, plant 3-5 ground-cover or rambling roses, and stay out of the way. Within a few years, youll find youre spending more time containing them than trying to make them grow.

A Centerpiece Rose Garden for Your Front Entrance

My mother gets credit for this one. She simply planted a rose bush at the base of her driveway lamp, and trained a few stalks to grow up along the lamp post. The result stunning! Red roses twine around the pole, and over the top of the lamp and spill around the ground at its base.

A Patio Rose Garden

Miniature hybrids and tea roses are quite happy growing in terracotta pots and other containers. If you have a sunny patio, try filling a large strawberry jar with a couple of tea rose bushes, and plant the pockets with trailing alyssum and purple lobelia.

A Mixed-Up Rose Garden

Roses love to share especially with garlic and onion plants. The tall, spiky foliage of onion, garlic and chive sets camouflage leggy rose stalks. Add a border of low-growing ground cover, and let the roses provide shade for shrinking violets and impatiens. Added bonus: garlic and onions keep away many rose pests.

Tips for keeping a gardening calendar

February 4th, 2010

There are any number of excellent reasons for keeping a traditional gardening calendar. The calendar is probably the best way of organizing tasks and setting reminders from the vast amounts of esoteric knowledge the gardener accumulates. However, that’s an awful lot of information, and a series of well-informed scrawls and notes usually arises, with or without any clues to what they mean. Some level of indecipherability also assists people in spending more time trying to figure out what they meant than doing the actual work. The risk is that the calendar will become a form of scheduled disorganization.

When making a gardening calendar, DON’T:

1. Use an ordinary calendar. No room for much more than scribbles.

2. Use unfamiliar terminology, something from a gardening show you just saw, or a textbook you can’t find.

3. Include too much detail. Space is important, and so is clarity.

4. Make an onerous task out of the work on the calendar, or the calendar itself. It can become a chore, and it doesn’t need to be.

5. Use unrealistic time frames for major efforts like mulching, pruning, weed control, fertilizers, pest control, and the rest of the epic, trying to fit them all in like they were an appointment book. It won’t work.

6. Become pedantic or obsessive about work scheduling. Gardens are pretty subjective things, and necessary work shouldn’t be left undone because “The calendar said so.” The real problem with this approach is that it tends to reduce the effectiveness of keeping a calendar in the first place.

When making a gardening calendar, DO:

1. Use a diary form of calendar with some extra pages for proper notation. It doesn’t have to be flash, but it does have to be workable.

2. Think about your entries, and make sure they’re clear. Write in capitals if you have to, but don’t make the classic error of including vital information in some microscopic jotting over another bit of text.

3. Always be specific about tasks. Express them as well as you can, and include references, like names (and preferably page numbers) of text books, so you can read instructions, or brand names, so you don’t lose useful information.

4. Make sure you know what you consider enough information to do the work. This is vital. “Prune roses” is a lot of information about what you’re supposed to be doing and none whatsoever about what sort of time frame and other related work is involved. With roses, it can be a lot, and two words just will not cover it all.

Rose Of Sharon Tree- 4 Reasons Why You Should Use The Rose Of Sharon Tree To Beautify Your Garden

February 1st, 2010

A number of rose gardeners are keen on planting a wide assortment of roses in their garden and the Rose of the Sharon tree is an all time favorite. It is a magnificent tree, which is not difficult to grow, tending to it is easy, and it blossoms for a relatively long period.

However, a little secret needs to be shared about the Rose of the Sharon tree. It may be hard to believe, but the Rose of the Sharon Tree is not a rose. In fact, this beautiful tree is really a hardy hibiscus. The pretty hibiscus bushes are well accepted by the gardener as they serve to enhance the look of the garden and provide the gardener the opportunity to grow them or other varieties of plants as a part of the standard gardening activity.

1. The Rose of the Sharon tree can reach lengths of about 8-10 ft when they are fully developed. The blossoms occur in a kaleidoscopic range of colors such as pink, white, blue, lavender and violet. Some varieties of the Rose of Sharon give rise to double-blooms. These twin bloom varieties usually have a darker shade in the middle and lighter hued blooms on the outside. You will simply love these plants, as they are not hard to grow, they can withstand drought and are resistant to pests, and will blossom for a number of weeks, from the end of summer to the start of the fall season.

2. One more wonderful aspect of this particular plant variety that is so widely used in gardening is that the Rose of Sharon does not very much resemble tropical plants, as do the other types of the hibiscus. Therefore, if you reside in a region where the presence of tropical plants in your garden would look incongruous, you can always fall back on the Rose of Sharon.

This plant tends to flourish in the hardiness zones five to nine of the USDA. Hence, the Rose of Sharon can be easily grown in most regions of this country where other varieties of the hibiscus are considered as annuals. It is all the rage in the south east of the US, where almost every garden has this plant to lend color to the garden at the end of the year.

3. The Rose of Sharon trees are marvelous plants for bringing in insects and hummingbirds to the garden. They will not bear foliage until the middle of July but if you think the plants have decayed, you cannot be more wrong. They will grow new leaves and start flowering by the middle of August, right when all the remaining flowers turn a pale shade and start to wilt due to the sweltering heat. The Rose of Sharon require very less maintenance but will bring forth more blossoms, if the soil is enriched with nutrients just before it is time to bloom every year.

4. The Rose of Sharon has multiple stems, but it is possible to guide it into taking the shape of a tree, and this imparts a beautiful appearance to the garden. The plant grows quite fast and you can thus, employ it to bestow on a newly set up garden some rapidly growing plants in rainbow hues. Hence, go forth and plant the Rose of Sharon (which is a not truly a rose) and it will provide the garden with vibrant flowers in varied hues.

Rose Garden Pests

Archive for February, 2010

Organic gardening tips – Part 1

Related Posts:

Organic gardening tips – Part 2

Related Posts:

Five Rose Garden Ideas

Related Posts:

Tips for keeping a gardening calendar

Related Posts:

Rose Of Sharon Tree- 4 Reasons Why You Should Use The Rose Of Sharon Tree To Beautify Your Garden

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