Why I Oughta...

Earlier this growing season, I discovered that most of our Disneyland Roses were having their foliage destroyed by someone or something.  The leaves were spotted and some of them were eaten-up and looked like lace.  Here's a post from June 2023 that shows one of those eaten-up leaves .   I applied a granular fertilizer all season - starting in early Spring - and I wasn't sure if the foliage damage was a result of the granules clinging to wet leaves, but it seemed far-fetched.   The foliage-eating continued all season, but by July, I decided to take some action and switched from just straight Rose Fertilizer to a 2-in-1 feed and care product from BioAdvance .  My hunch was that SOMETHING was eating the leaves and the 2-in-1 is a 'systemic' product. That means it isn't something that takes root immediately and eliminates the pests.  Rather, it feeds the roses and - via the roots - takes up the insecticide and carries it to all the plant material....

One of the things that I've had on my last few annual 'to do lists' in the garden is to keep up with various seasonal tasks like feeding, treating, pruning, etc.  Basically....good garden and tree maintenance.  This year, it came in at #16 on the list and included items like feeding the roses ( which I did last week for the first time this season ) and dividing perennials, protecting everything from winter and rabbits and... treating trees.  For the past few years, I've had the fine folks at Davey do an annual deep-root feeding treatment of everything in the yard (in the fall) and I've complemented that application with one of my own on a few select trees.   Start back in 2020, I noticed that our Greenspire Lindens were being covered in Yellow Jackets and upon inspection, it appeared that the trees were inhabited by aphids - which in turn created honeydew - which was what the Yellow Jackets were after.  In order to get rid of the Yellow Jackets, I had to...

The last time, I posted on our toad lilies that I planted this Spring was earlier this month when I shared some photos of the buds that were about to burst and show flowers for the first time in our yard.  Fast forward to today and when I was out in back, I noticed that ALL of the flowers were gone.  Cut right off below where the buds were located.  I say 'cut', but what I really think I mean is 'chewed' right off.  By whom?  I'm guessing rabbits.   I planted these in late Spring . See below for a photo showing how these toad lilies were clipped/chewed right off.   This means that we didn't get ANY flowers from these.  Or at least, I didn't SEE them.   Note to my future self:  protect the toad lilies with some pest-fencing next year.  Maybe with some poultry wire to ring these up?  Seems like the critters like the buds and not the leaves.

A couple of weeks ago, I took some steps to head off the annual aphid infestation that has been occuring on our Greenspire Linden trees that leads to them being swarmed by Yellow Jackets who are eating the aphids.  Back in mid-May, I applied a Systemic Soil-Application insecticide and - just to be doubly sure - I also sprayed a persistent contact spray to the leaves just to kill whatever might already be on the leave s.   As a reminder, this is what the underside of the leaves looked like when the Linden Aphids were living on them (back in late Summer 2020).  Doing this check-in on the Lindens (which...are currently espalier'd in a horizontal Cordon, btw), I looked at the underside of the leaves.  And, while I don't see any of the aphids like I did last year, I do see some white, hairy spots at the intersection of the leaf veins.  See below for a zoomed-in shot of the leaves: I've done as close of an inspection as I can on these photos and I can't tell ...

Back a few weeks ago, I posted some photos showing how Yellow Jackets covering our espalier'd Greenspire Linden trees due to (based on what I found line) what appeared to be aphids infesting the tree.   Recently, we had a couple of nights of frost (overnight) and that has killed away all the yellow jackets.  So, I could finally get close enough to the tree to inspect what is going on.  My assumption was that the frost likely killed off WHATEVER was eating the leaves and causing the Yellow Jackets to feast.   But, I was pleasantly surprised when I grabbed a leaf and turned it over.  The lace-like leaf had a couple of inhabitants on the underside.  Here's what I saw: See them?  Here's a closer look: Two guys that are yellow and black striped and hanging out on the underside of the leaf. But, what are they?  Pretty sure they are Linden Aphids.  The Bug Guide has a photo that sure looks a lot like these things and, ummm, they're on a ...

 For the past two years, I've noticed that some sort of bee 1 has been finding a home on our espalier'd Linden trees.  There has been A LOT of them.  Swarming around the tree, climbing on the leaves, etc.  I If you look closely at the photo, you can see some of them.  Each tree has dozens of them. I figured that they had a nest close or something.  But, I wanted to find out more.  First, I wanted to figure out what they were.  This handy chart from Rescue.com shows difference between wasps and yellow jackets .  Based on that, I'm pretty sure these are Yellow Jackets.  They're short and fat.  So, I went out onto the Web to try to figure out why our Lindens are covered in these things.  And, sure enough, there are a series of posts on Extension.org.  Including this one that was answered by Robert Cox from CSU that tells me that the Yellow Jackets aren't there because they love the Linden . They're there because the tree has...