Tips for Gardening/Landscaping

Life is hard; food doesn't have to be #131 [vol6, 3.4]

This space is dedicated to sharing recipes. Occasionally I drift and share something else. This edition is about landscaping. Next letter will be back to food.

not sure you can tell how we cleaned up these beds but it was a huge improvement

Last fall, friends let me come over and clean out their front landscaping beds. Most of the bushes were dead or dying (I think from mole tunnels). Wanting low maintenance and inexpensive, we focused on cleaning up invasive ivy and planted two new azaleas by the front door and two ostrich ferns which will get huge, as well as transplanted several plants, like hostas, from my house (free).

When finished, it looked amazing to me. I was super stoked.

To be honest it didn’t really look all that good. There wasn’t much noticeable difference.

However, this spring…things are beginning to look completely different. I planted several daffodils as well; they’re my favorite sign that WINTER IS OVER.

I had the thought while pulling weeds…actually I have lotsa thoughts… the main thought was parenting is similar to fall gardening. It’s nearly impossible to see the progress, yet we put in the work by faith that one day things work out. There’s a lot of weeding and pruning that happens with parenting (not sexy but hard work that’s totally worth it later.)

Invasive Worms That Look like Night Crawlers

They look like regular night crawlers but from Asia and jump around and thrash. They’ve been discovered in 37 states and Canada. Destroy them if you find one. A tale tell sign is they turn the topsoil into a coffee grounds consistency. Here’s a quick YouTube to help identify them. I’m almost sure I had some in my landscaping in Little Rock.

If you find them freeze them until they die and throw away. If you dry to kill by segmentation, they will regenerate profusely.

Invasive Hammer Head Worms

The first time I saw the hammer head worm in Little Rock I was so intrigued by it’s shape. After a quick google search I realized it’s a bad dude. They eat beneficial earthworms! If you dry to kill by segmentation, sometimes the segments can regenerate. Kill them by putting into soapy water.

Bag Worms Killed My Tree

I noticed the tree dying last fall and am embarrassed to admit I didn’t investigate. I assumed the tree was old. Last week when asking a contractor about digging up a neighboring giant holly, he pointed to the bag worms and said, “That’s what killed that tree. You need to burn it.”

After a bit of research, those are some bad dudes. If you find these on any evergreen, take action quickly. I picked off all I could find (including in neighboring plants) and burned the bags.

Typically I stay away from chemicals but I bought a soil drench (active ingredient: imidacloprid) in an attempt to save the remainder of my evergreens. Once you see a bag worm there are usually more lurking.

Tips for Spring

Fertilize azaleas, holly trees and bushes with Holly-tone. It’s a gentle organic /natural fertilizer. Costco has large bags at the best price. It’s actually a good time to fertilize most landscaping bushes (like boxwood). If you can time it right, the absolute best is to fertilize just before a gentle rain so the moisture helps the nutrients reach the roots.

Use a rake or similar hand tool to pull back leaves or mulch to the drip line of the bush (imagine a string hanging from the outermost leaves). Sprinkle fertilizer all around the base of the bush then cover back with that mulch.

Have an older overgrown holly bush? For size control or invigorating new growth, now is the time for severe pruning. General prune: take off new growth or up to ⅓ of the overall plant. Never prune the lower branches shorter than the upper branches - the lower branches won't have good light.

I reduced the volume of this bush by at least 1/3. It's difficult to tell in the pictures but it had grown leggy. I cut quite a bit from the inside to encourage it to flush from within..

Liriope, also known as monkey grass, is best trimmed to the ground in late winter or early spring before new growth starts. However, I’ve trimmed it as late as June. I do it with an old pair of scissors or garden shears, depending on the size/clump of this ornamental grass. For efficiency, you could whack with weed-eater.

I have worked seasonally at a local garden center. Here’s a post I wrote about tips for going to a garden center.

Emily Fixed My Landscaping

Dear friend visits KY from Little Rock.

Emily Knox visited from Little Rock to orchestrate Project Fix Julie’s Landscape. She said I had good bones (established evergreens). Except they were in the wrong places. It was so fun to watch an expert envision beauty and execute the plan with efficiency. Never in a million years would I have been able to do what she did. She did it in 4 hours (with the help of a hired tiny excavator!)

Landscaping makes a HUGE difference to the value and first impressions of your home. As I mentioned above, I worked seasonally at a garden center. It is worth every penny to hire someone who knows what they’re doing to make plans for you (if you don’t have a friend like Emily!)

Fingers crossed the transplants survive and thrive! The azaleas were moved to the back of the house. They aren’t picture worthy now — hopefully next spring!

It looks amazing in person. Will add more plants in front of the evergreens.

I still need to buy more shrubs for the right of the front door and hope to do that today.

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Back to food next time.

Julie