Welcome to the Jungle! (part 2)

Saturday, Jun. 23, 2007 – 11:17 p.m.

2007-06-23 11:17

To continue where I left off last night (I was falling asleep so decided I would just post what I had…):

I managed to go around the entire garden and knock beetles in the the water. Got quite a few though there were a bunch that got away. Oh well.

Once I had made my collection of beetles (and set them aside to drown in the soapy water) I returned to Madame Berkeley and did the deadheading and weeding. The first bed wasn’t that bad regarding weeds the only rose with any blooms left is Madame Berkeley.

Moving on to the other beds, I managed to get the bed with Iceberg and the two The Fairy bushes weeded as well as the center bed with Souv. de la Malmaison (which was pretty weed free anyway) before it got too dark to work. And I managed to fill up a trashcan with yardwaste (mostly weeds). Oh, note to self: wear a long sleeve shirt or a sweatshirt when weeding. Your arms will be happier.

Saturday Activities

This morning was the monthly meeting of the Raleigh Rose Society and Harold White did a talk about rooting roses. It was a good talk and I picked up a few pointers that may improve my success with rooting some stuff:

  • He said he had been quite successful rooting cuttings over the the winter by just prepping the cutting as he would normally then just sticking it in the ground next to the parent bush (so you don’t have to worry about labeling it). The cutting forms a callus over the winter and starts growing roots in the spring. He doesn’t do anything to protect them or anything! Hey, I can do that. [grin]
  • To prep cuttings, he cuts through a node, and strips all but one set of leaves off the cutting (the stem is still a good 8″ long) and cuts off the terminal leaflet. The idea is you have enough leaf area to maintain transpiration but not too much. This also means that the leaves don’t touch the sides of the bottle used to make the “greenhouse”.
  • Once the cutting is prepped and inserted into the rooting media, he sprays the cutting with a weak solution of hydrogen peroxide (about 8oz of storebagout. This is to retard/prevent growth of fungus like blackspot.

I will have to give these techniques a try. He also talked about pegging and I am going to look at the Souv. dela Malmaison. I think there are some low branches/cans that I could work with.

Back to the garden…

The first order of business was to get the lawn mowed. It took a while and I ran out of gas so had to break in the middle to go get more. The mower sounds like it is running a bit rough. I am going to replace the air filter (which I have not done yet this year) so maybe that will resolve the problem…. However, I may need to replace it and I am thinking of getting an electric model that runs on rechargeable batteries.

After supper, there was still some light left so I grabbed the other trashcan, the pruners, gloves, and a sweatshirt and headed back out. I decided to tackle the bed with Voodo, the irises, and Scentimental. It was so overrun with grass, one could hardly see the miniatures like Miss Flippens. I filled up another trashcan with weeds by the time it was too dark to work. I will need to go back tomorrow and get the weeds I missed. It got to the point I could not differentiate between the weeds and the canes of the minis. I also pruned as much of the damage from the failure of the faucet the beginning of the month as I could determine given the light. I think Dainty Bess took the hardest hit. I had to prune back the biggest cane. The Queen Elizabeth took a hard hit as well… but it is hard to tell because the J. beetles have chewed up almost all of its leaves.

In the morning, I need to finish up the weeding and then do another spray. I still have the mildew problem so I am probably going to have to spray multiple times this week. I need to check the labels of the stuff I have to see which is most effective on mildew. Looking at the rosemania.com website, it looks like they recommend a product called E-Rase for the control of powdery mildew. Looks like it is pretty benign product derived from the Oil of Jojoba. I don’t know if I can get it locally though… I will have to give Witherspoon, Logans, and Family Home and Garden calls to check…. or I could just go ahead and order it from Rosemania.com. It would probably be here before next weekend.

Well, its again late at night and I need to go to bed if I am going to get up early and do the rest of the weeding/spraying in the cool of the morning.