After Pennsic Catch-up

Tuesday, Sept. 04, 2007 – 8:25 p.m.

2007-09-04 8:25

Pennsic was great but the garden generally went to pot while I was gone. We had rain almost every day we were there (it did clear off for the final friday and the Saturday and Sunday of load-out were clear and sunny…. which was good because the canvas was dry when it was packed.) Meanwhile, back here, they were having a heat wave. Temps over 100.. no rain. In fact we are currently running a deficit of about 6″ for the year. All the lakes in the area are a record lows and the City of Raleigh finally instituted watering restrictions (of course, the Town of Cary has had those restrictions for the past 5 years or so… we are used to them). I was expecting to have to mow my lawn when I got back from Pennsic… nope… well, I did need to mow in the areas around the rose beds, since those get watered on a regular basis. So I have a green oasis in the middle of my yellow/brown lawn. I actually lost a number of rose plants that I had put in pots but had not put on the watering system. These were Rosa Mundi and The Fairy plants that I had split off and dug up. Oh well.

Two weeks ago (the saturday after returning from pennsic), I got out and did a bunch of weeding and deadheading. Yikes, there was a lot to do… And I need to do it again. One of the things I noticed was that I need to remulch most of the beds. I should have done it earlier, it probably would have made a difference on how stressed the bushes are from the heat. I think I filled up at least one of my rolling trashcans with weeds. I also mowed around the rose beds.

This weekend I sprayed. On sunday, I did a course of Banner Maxx, Conserve, and Mancozeb. I have a fair bit of black spot, which is not that surprising, but I guess it is not as bad as it could be because we haven’t had much in the way of rain. I am thinking I am going to do the Rosemania.com process for nailing blackspot where you spray every three days for three treatments. Therefore, I will need to spray tomorrow morning… and Saturday morning (hmmm… not going to be here Sat morning… Guess I could do it friday morning? and again Monday morning?) with Mancozeb. Have to think a little bit more about that.

Deadheaded tonight, at least while I still had light. I got most of the beds done. Not much on the way at present. Did pick a bunch about 10 days ago to take up to Lara. Not sure how many I will be able to take this week. Oh well.

I did get 12 bags of pine bark to mulch and got one of the beds remulched. This is the bed with the two The Fairy and Iceberg and it took 6 bags. Therefore it looks like I have enough to do one other bed before I have to go get more bags.

I also got a bag of 10-10-10 fertilizer and gave the bushes a feeding. I wanted to do this before I put down the mulch. I needed to get it done because if I waited too much longer, I would still have active growth late in the fall and into the winter. Of course, how bad that actually is depends on whether we have a lot of cold weather this winter.

I guess that’s enough for now.

Leave a Reply