Tuesday, Jun. 24, 2003 – 4:42 p.m.
2003-06-24 4:42
Ok, so I don’t get behind again, I am going to do recent stuff followed by some of the stuff I wrote back in May and June but never posted….
Mulching and Weeding
This past weekend (June 21-22) was just delightful weatherwise. I finally got out and finished the weeding of the bed with the Voodoo in it. My initial test of the herbicide for wiregrass was pretty successful. It did a pretty good job on it and I did not detect any effect on the irises. A couple of weeks ago, I did a follow-up spraying to address the rest of the grass and I sprayed closer to the irises. The biggest problem I had was that I miscalculated the measurements for the stuff and mixed it double strength. The good news is that even at double strength, the irises appear to not been affected. The bad news is that I appear to have gotten some run off into the lawn (not really that surprising given the amount of rain we have had and the double-strength spray) and now I have a brown area about 3 ft x 5 ft in the grass. Oops!
This morning, I applied ferilizer, re-ran the soaker host for that bed (which seemed a little short), pegged it down, and applied 7 bags (14 cu.ft.) of pinebark mulch to the bed. Looks pretty good! I had been using pinestraw in the other beds and while it has worked pretty well in bed #1, in bed #3 (the one with iceburg, ceasar chavez, double delight, etc) I have been having LOTS of weed problems. Maybe it is the bed, maybe it is the pinestraw, I don’t know. I think I will get another 6 bags (I bought 8 to do the Voodoo bed) to do bed #3. Since the weather is finally getting hot, I really need to have the soaker hoses done and working and everything mulched up.
Beetles!!
Yes, the japanese beetles have arrived. [moan][curse]. I have only seen a few so far and those have not been on the roses I expected (generally the light colored blooms get hit hardest). I am thinking that our cool wet spring had a dampening effect…. (I am hoping that the larvae drown!!) I read someplace recently that one should NOT crush the beetles in place. I guess this is because it leave the smell (pheromones) and attracts more beetles. I have been using the Bayer Flower and Rose spray and that seems to do a pretty good job at killing the ones that I can see.
hmmm… guess I will need to add the older stuff in a different posting…