BUGS: THE BAD...

            While searching for pictures for this post, I stumbled upon a depressingly large number of websites dedicated to the extermination of insects. Commercial sites, plant pathology sites, university sites, cooperative extension sites, gardening sites, sites devoted to jihad against one particular bug, all invoking death to the six-legged and the arachnids they rode in on. No wonder world peace has at best an ice cube’s chance in hell: we can’t even manage coexistence with creatures we can barely see without running for things to kill them with.

            Well, that’s why they invented Zoloft and British cozy mysteries and aptly monikered Wendy Cope.

            I would like to make clear that, despite the title of this post, no bug is bad in any moral sense. They merely do what they were born to do. Those Japanese beetles skeletonizing the foliage on your favorite rose bush bear you no personal ill-will. They’re just being Japanese beetles trying to stay alive long enough to reproduce. It’s called “the biological imperative,” and all living things are subject to the mandate to some degree. It’s not synonymous with “evil” in any species.

            That being said (and my conscience assuaged), gardeners often find some common insects, er, problematic. (I refer here primarily to ornamental gardeners: those who grow edibles are beset by woes we flower-lovers can’t even begin to imagine.) Said insects generally fall into two categories: sucking pests and chewing pests.

            In my neighborhood, the plant-juice suckers outnumber the plant-leaf-and-fruit chewers by a wide margin. Why? Just lucky, I guess. And of all the suckers, the one we see most of is scale.

            Now, I said “scale,” singular. That’s misleading. There are lots and lots of scales. You got your soft scales and your armored scales; your black, brown, red, white, rose, olive and calico scales; your euonymous, holly, magnolia, camellia, oleander, palm, hemlock, pine, oak, elm, beech, juniper, fern, peach, and walnut scales; your California, Florida, Indian, Chinese, European and San Jose scales; scales named for people named Fletcher, Maskell, Forbes, Townsend, Putnam and Boisduval. Scales can be gloomy, obscure, frosted, irregular, elongate or scurfy; they might resemble wax, barnacles, terrapins, tortoises, oyster shells, umbrellas or cottony cushions. All together, North America is home to about 1240 species. And they all suck.

Tea scale on the underside
Chinese holly leaves

           



A cottony cushion scale convention
that killed this cleyera twig



            Pictured above and below are four we see a lot of. Tea scales fall under the rubric of armored, although they’re too tiny for us to make out individuals. They love camellias (which is why they’re called “tea”—don’t tell me you didn’t know the tea we drink comes from Camellia sinensis), Chinese hollies and Chinese ligustrums. As its name suggests, cottony cushion is a soft scale. Pyracantha is a favorite of theirs, as is cleyera. Also softies in a gooey sort of way, wax scales are largely tropical, but a few species do quite well in the southern U.S. We find them on hollies, pears, camellias and magnolias. The brown scale here looks like it ought to belong in the armored class, but it’s soft too. We encounter this kind less often than the others, but usually in large infestations. The worst case ever seen by Fitzgeralds Gardening occurred on a trio of ‘Little Gem’ magnolias that were planted too deep; ergo, badly stressed. The second worst instance was on willow oak.



Aptly named wax scale



Also aptly named brown scale



           

 

 

The upper sides of lacebugged
azalea foliage



Newly hatched lacebugs
on the underside of an azalea leaf

 



 

            



            Do your azalea leaves look like the ones pictured here? If so, you've got lacebugs. Don't confuse these miniscule suckers with the lovely, beneficial, diaphanous-winged lacewing: like Texas, lacebugs are a whole other country. In the neutral to alkaline soils of coastal North Carolina, lacebugs are as certain as death and taxes on acid-loving, stressed-out azaleas.


Whiteflies and their eggs



A herd of yellow aphids



           

            When it comes to sucking the life out of gardenias, whiteflies rule. For crapes and many perennials, it’s aphids. Spider mites—not true insects but arachnids—plague conifers and houseplants. All these creatures have marvelous mouthpieces exquisitely adapted to extracting plant juices from leaves. I’d appreciate them more if they didn’t cause foliage discoloration, distortion and death.   



Itty-bitty red spider mites



How to tell if you have spider mites:
stippled leaves and webs
(click on this one to see the details)



           

   

This is what sooty mold,
 caused by "honeydew,"
looks like

            A corollary problem of all sucking insects is their poop. Named “honeydew” by some horticultural wag, the excrement falls on and proceeds to stick to surrounding foliage, covering it with an unattractive matte black coating of moldy recycled plant juices. Fortunately, it’s largely a cosmetic problem, fairly easy to remove. Just follow the instructions in the “Quick Tips” post of April 5.

            Treat scales, whiteflies and mites with all-season horticultural oil (UltraFine is one brand). Their soft coverings make soft scales susceptible to the smothering effects of oil at all their life stages. Armored scales are tougher to kill because of their, well, armor. Horticultural oil works on the more casually outfitted crawler stage, and can be somewhat effective on the immobile ones. In winter, heavier dormant oil formulations might make a dent in populations. Hand-picking, scraping or pruning out heavily infested branches might be your best bet if scale is your problem. Trickier to control because of their life-long mobility, whiteflies and mites require patience and vigilance to overcome. Hort oil and insecticidal soaps work IF the insect or its eggs get coated by the application. Repeated dosings according to package directions will probably be necessary.

            Aphids, on the other hand, are easy to get rid of. You can blast them with a strong jet of water from the hose or squish them by hand. The squeamish among you can drench them with insecticidal soap. Nothing stronger is ever required for these suckers.



A moderate infestation of
the dreaded azalea caterpillar
can defoliate an azalea (duh)
in a week or two



Two-striped grasshopper



           

             The other main class of insect pests is the chewers. This group is better known, mainly because they’re bigger; hence, more visible. Grasshoppers, Japanese beetles and the larva of less beautiful butterflies and moths are the most common examples. The good news is, if you pay attention to what’s going on in your garden, you can keep the damage to acceptable levels by mechanical methods… which means hand-picking, hand-shooing, flicking slow-moving offenders into jars of soapy water, and, in the case of the ones who build little houses, destroying same. Spraying insecticides does no good if you don’t make contact with the target. Such chemicals never act preventively, so don’t bother.



Tent caterpillars in their cozy home



This is the bag the bagworm lives in



           



Your basic grey garden slug



             One last chewer—sort of—outside of the realm of true insects is the slug and its agoraphobic cousin, the snail. These slimy guys are gastropods, literally “stomach foot.” That’s how these nocturnal creatures tatter your hosta leaves: they extrude their stomachs through their foot, which is pretty much the whole body except the head. Another instance of elegant design in the invertebrate kingdom, slugs are easy to deter. Coffee grounds, coarsely broken eggshells, diatomaceous earth or rings of copper tubing around susceptible plants distress delicate foot-tummy tissues that attempt to cross them. Saucers of beer draw these little sots like magnets to drowning, but very happy, deaths. Eliminate daytime hidey-holes by cleaning up piles of damp debris and discarded boards. Encourage toads, major slug predators.

            The best way to discourage pests? Grow unstressed plants whose natural defense mechanisms are in full vigor. Let the trinity of right plant, right place, healthy soil be the launching pad for your pest-controlled garden.

            Still more bugs next time. Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                    Kathy

QUICK TIPS

            Tim and I spent the last week or so doing a basic spring landscape clear-out—pruning, weeding, feeding. (It wasn’t awful as it sounds: an average Fitz workday runs about four hours, plus we get all inclement-weather days off. Oh, the joys of self-employment! But don’t try this at home, kids, unless you are mortgage- and debt-free, and can be happy with a simple, low-tech, anti-consumption lifestyle.) The lovely, appreciative couple whose yard we literally crawled all over marveled at the difference between before and after. And that’s without planting a thing except one 30” hayrack.

Southern crabapple blossom
(Malus angustifolius)

            It’s not really horrendously hard work, because Tim and I have a rhythm that plays to our individual strengths. It occurred to me that I could share some of our techniques, discovered during years of T always looking for the easiest, fastest and most efficient way to get things done and me poking along behind, humming to myself, avoiding tool-use as much as possible.          

I’ve also been having an online conversation with a reader named Julie about some of her gardening woes. She describes a problem, I respond with what I think the cause might be and suggest a solution. (See what making a comment can do for you?)  Between the two of us, we decided a post of early-spring tips might be generally helpful. So here are a dozen snippets of random advice, from the voice of experience.

           

TIP 1:  The optimal time to feed your plants is when active growth begins. I’ve covered the ins and outs of this topic ad nauseum in “Food for Thought, Parts 1 and 2” (see February 20^th and 24^th posts), so all I’ll add here is a factoid: at the job we just finished, it took five 40-pound bags of Holly-Tone to do the job right for an average-size suburban lot. Don’t scrimp.



Unlimbed-up hedge



TIP 2:  Prune before you feed, so you aren’t schlepping around underneath shrubs with your face in fertilizer. What do you mean, “underneath”? you say. I mean it’s critical that you limb up plants from below to enhance good air circulation, in turn enhancing pest resistance. (I recommend protective eyewear for this task if you don’t already need corrective lenses to see your shrubs.) Cool weather is best for this chore, especially for those of you who are reptile- and insect-phobic—get out there before hibernating creatures stir. Clear out dead leaves and twigs and old mulch while you’re down there: this also helps improve circulation and can remove overwintering pests.



Limbed-up hedge



TIP 3:  One other pruning hint—if you haul your cullings off yourself, cut them into straight pieces so they’ll compact better. Y- and L-jointed branches take up more space, meaning more runs to the dumping ground.     

TIP 4:  On to weeding. Drag a big tub (my favorite is a 25-gallon nursery pot) around with you for collection. It’s easier than making piles you have to go back and pick up later. Why do I have to weed? I hear you whining. Because weeds take water and nutrients away from the things you actually planted, that’s why. Don’t throw weed flowers or seeds into the compost pile. That’s just asking for trouble. (At T’s and my latest job, wild garlic grew rampantly. Its bulbs, and those of wild onions, are edible. The onions’ flavor is sharper, like green onions, and the garlic milder than cultivated versions. Just in case you were wondering.)



Summer snowflake
(Leucojum aestivum)



TIP 5:  While you’re down on the ground weeding, you might as well neaten up the edges of your beds. I pull the mulch away from the grass, removing any lawn incursions, and leave the edge open. Tim comes behind me with his sharp shovel and cuts a lovely English trench. (Sound like too much work? You may want to invest in hard edging, which is a topic for another day.)

TIP 6:  Getting ready to plant containers? Clean your pots after emptying them—recycle the soil to the compost pile or to low spots in your yard if last season’s plants stayed healthy. I don’t usually bother with the ten-to-one bleach-and-water scrub, but I do give my pots a brisk once-over, inside and out, with a nail brush, then wipe them down with a clean cloth (which is why I never throw away ratty dishtowels).



Sweetly fragrant monastery vine
(Akebia quinata 'Shiro Bana')



TIP 7:  How do you figure how much soil your pots will need? Cubic volume is height times width times depth, which gives you cubic inches: divide by 1728 to convert to cubic feet. But what about soil measured in quarts? A 32-quart bag fills two-and-a-quarter-ish 30-inch by 9-inch by 6-inch hayracks, so I’d guesstimate it to be a tad over two cubic feet of soil. Trial and error is the best teacher, of course. Always buy more than you think you’ll need: that way you won’t have to stop in the middle of planting to run back to Lowe’s.





Rain and wind-battered
Rosa chinensis 'Mutabilis'



TIP 8:  Mix a couple of 16-ounce cupfuls of composted matter (I use Black Kow) and a half-cup or so of kelp meal into that 30” hayrack’s soil. All commercial potting mixes are sterile by definition: the Kow helps with moisture retention and the kelp with trace minerals Osmocote and Miracle-Gro (good fertilizer choices for containers) lack.    

TIP 9:  If you have moss or coco-liners to change out, the old ones make good weed barrier fabric for around trees and shrubs. You’re not only recycling, you’re building your soil as the liners decompose over time.



Spanish bluebells
(Hyacinthiodes hispanica)



TIP 10:  Is your garden’s soil sandy? Azaleas, gardenias and Japanese camellias looking sad? Give them a boost by doing three things. 1) Make sure they are not too deep in the ground. In particular, shallow-rooted azaleas do best when their topmost rootlets are at soil level. Digging them up and resetting them higher will make a world of difference. 2) Take advantage of the replanting opportunity and amend the soil in the hole with composted matter and a healthy dollop of elemental sulfur (available at farmers supply stores if not at the local home improvement emporium). 3) Feed the buggers. In addition to appropriate amounts of Holly-Tone, topdress all your acid-lovers annually with composted matter and elemental sulfur if your native soil tends toward neutral or alkaline.

TIP 11:  Distressed by a black coating on your gardenias and-or crape myrtle foliage? It’s called sooty mold, and is mildewed whitefly and aphid poop, respectively. The good news? It’s a cosmetic problem, and, since neither pest is active right now (although they will be soon!), now’s a good time to clean the mess off. Mix a tablespoon of soap (not detergent) in a quart of water in a spray bottle. Coat the affected foliage to the dripping point, top and bottom, with the soapy water. Let it sit 10 or 15 minutes, then blast the plant with the hose to wash the stuff off.



American honeysuckle
(Lonicera sempervirens)



TIP 12:  To prevent recurrence, clear out and dispose of (but not in the compost) the mulch and any dead leaves at the base of the plants to remove any over-wintering eggs or larvae. Treat gardenias with horticultural oil at intervals all season, per package directions. Aphids on crapes (or anything else, for that matter) dislodge easily with a strong jet of water from the hose, or you can use an insecticidal-soap spray. Make sure all plants have good air circulation from all directions, including from underneath.

            Hope these tips help as you ready your property for the coming warm weather. Not that gardeners need an excuse to spend time outside in the spring.

            A note on the pictures: since the subject wasn’t particularly photogenic (except the limbing-up underneath bit), I supplemented with what’s blooming today chez Fitz.

            Thanks for dropping by. Next time—veggies!

                                                                        Kathy