Rodd's Seeds of Wisdom Horticultural tips and tricks from Rodd Moesel

Crape Myrtle shrubs love the hot days of summer and after the nice rains of June they are producing a spectacular show across Oklahoma this year. I truly believe they should be our state shrub and some community should plant them extensively and then host a big Crape Myrtle festival. Crape Myrtle bloom for many weeks starting in late June, often putting on a colorful flower show into early fall. There are dwarf varieties that only grow 2 to 6 feet tall and the more common semi-dwarf varieties that are tall shrubs or even small trees of 7 to 15 feet tall. They are currently beautifying up the Oklahoma Landscape with colorful clusters of light to dark pink, red, lavender, white or variegated flowers. Most of the newer Crape Myrtle varieties are mildew resistant and experience few pest or insect problems. Some of the older varieties still have a problem with powdery mildew which looks like a white powder over the foliage, limits photosynthesis and may require use of a fungicide.

There are hundreds of varieties of Crape Myrtle so select one that will bloom the color you want and grow to the size that fits where you are planting it. When space allows, Crape Myrtle add even more impact when planted in groups of three or in rows or at the corners of a property or building. They are a deciduous shrub and will drop their leaves after the first hard freeze but the bark on the trunks is quite interesting and attractive to add excitement to our winter landscape.

There are many breeders and nurserymen around the United States working to add even more colors and growth styles to the Crape Myrtle catalog. The best of those breeders is right here in Oklahoma. Dr. Carl Whitcomb, formerly of Oklahoma State University and now with Lacebark Publications makes tens of thousands of crosses each year and then grows out the seedlings in his quest for the next great Crape Myrtle. He has already introduced many exciting new varieties to the national market from his breathtaking Crape Myrtle fields at Stillwater, Oklahoma.

You can plant new container grown Crape Myrtle even in the summer heat as long as you will be faithful with your watering. It is always a good practice to mulch summer plantings with a thin layer of bark or hull mulches to help reduce watering and to cool the soil temperature.

Crape Myrtle is only one of many plants who actually like and thrive in the hot weather as long as they get sufficient water in the heat. Many pests and insects also do well in the heat and are exploding in population. In the last couple of weeks, we have seen lots of bagworms, armies of grasshoppers, spider mites, squash bugs and caterpillar damage. The animal lovers are dealing with fleas and ticks. Visit your local nurseryman or garden center to identify your problems and to select the control that works best for you. You can choose to share your crop or landscape with these invaders, provide physical control by hand picking or trapping the pests, release beneficial insects or use an organic or chemical control.

The weeds also love the extra rain these last few weeks and the summer heat. You need to limit the weeds by hand pulling, mulching to reduce the weed population or selective use of herbicides to limit the weed competition with your desired crops. It is years like this that help gardeners understand why farmers spend and apply way more herbicides or weed killers than insecticides or fungicides.

Rodd’s article for Saturday, July 5, 2014

Happy Birthday America! Hopefully you and your family got the weekend of celebrations off to a great start yesterday. Our great country is 238 years old and gardening, horticulture and agriculture have been a key part of our country’s history and success from the beginning. Many of our early Presidents were gifted farmers and excellent botanists and gardeners. To this very day, two of the most visited gardens in America are those of George Washington at Mt. Vernon, Virginia and Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, also in Virginia. These two outstanding former Presidents were great students of the plants around them and not only raised vegetables, herbs, grains, berries and fruits for personnel subsistence and to feed their families, guests and all those who lived and worked on their farms but they planted lots of ornamental plants, shrubs and trees. They both, as did many other early day leaders and pioneer families kept detailed records of plant performance, pollinated and did some of their own crosses or breeding and experimented with different production techniques and timing. From the earliest settlers there were many crop failures, including plants brought from Europe and other areas around the world that did not work or adapt to these new lands and climates. Many other crops did work and that combined with the great natural vegetation of America led to great agricultural and gardening achievements after the first few tough years on this continent. Soon we were exporting cotton, tobacco and many other crops back to Europe and later around the world. Our farmers have been for a long time the most productive in the world because of the experimentation and imagination of our agricultural leaders since the early days of our country. Since the example set in the early days to share plant material, notes and records American farmers and gardeners have almost always shared their knowledge and plant stocks rather than hoarding it. Thomas Jefferson was such an active plant lover and botanist that one of his main reasons to promote the Louisiana Purchase and the following Lewis and Clark Expedition was to discover all the new plants and genetics in the vast new wonderlands of the central and western continent they opened up and later became part of these United States. Abraham Lincoln led the effort not only to keep the young country together but he led the effort to create two major new institutions that dramatically advanced farming and gardening. The Land Grant Universities led the way in agricultural research and opened higher education up to the masses not just the “well to do” and continue 150 years later to expand our knowledge base and to train our leaders of the future.

The Extension Service is celebrating its 100th Anniversary this year and has been a huge difference in sharing agricultural and gardening information across our whole country. Their role is to move the information from research and teaching. They help share the successes and the failures in an effort to help us all be more successful the first time we attempt to raise a crop. Those programs continue today through 4-H, Master Gardeners, local extension offices and countless other efforts. We celebrate this great country, its innovative farmers, its gifted gardeners, great forward thinking leaders, the concerned and caring conservationists. They have worked hard to care for this land, feed our families and much of the world while beautifying our communities, cooling and cleaning the environment while producing fresh oxygen in partnership with Mother Nature.

There is still time to plant this season as you mulch and water your existing plants and enjoy the wonders of your yard and landscape.

Oklahoma has been blessed with wonderful soaking rains the last three weeks.  Our trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables have responded with lots of new growth and great green colors.  This break in the weather has given us another good planting season. Many plants are the happiest they have been in years with the nurturing rains and mild temperatures. You can still plant most all kinds of container grown color annuals, perennials, herbs, shrubs and trees and still get lots of enjoyment this year.  At some point we will get hot and dry again.   Mulch your vegetables, annuals and perennials now to reduce soil temperatures, soil moisture evaporation and to reduce watering by up to half when it does get hot and dry.

This is also the battle season in the yard and garden.   We are faced with decisions on how much of our vegetable garden, flowers or fruit to share with God’s other creations and where to draw the battle lines.  You can decide how to fight the battle, with physical barriers, organic compounds or with targeted synthetic compounds. The next few months are the main battle season for pests both large and small.  Some Oklahoma gardeners have to battle deer, others deal with damage from armadillos, skunks, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels or the damaging underground sneak attacks of moles and gophers.  We can deal with these large pests by using fences or barricades to keep them out, live traps to catch them or a wide variety of repellents to redirect them to a friendlier neighbor.  Often the only way to control moles and gophers is to poison them with poison peanuts, gopher gas, or other gel, “worm” or bait type poisons.  Moles and gophers are usually present when you have lots of grubs so the long term solution is to get rid of the grubs and then the moles and gophers will relocate to your “grubby” neighbors.

The small pests or insects may not look very big but their populations can explode in warm weather and they can do shocking damage.  Years ago many gardeners would spray every week or two whether they needed it or not.  Now we all try to be more green and sustainable and spray only when a problem gets above our threshold of sharing or certainly only when we see a problem.  Most every pest can be treated and hopefully controlled with either a synthetic or organic compound.  Take a sample of your insect or disease problem to your local nurseryman and they can help identify the problem and prescribe your solutions.  These days there are many good land grant university web sites, like Oklahoma State University, with insect and disease pictures and solutions if you want to self diagnose.

We currently are battling bagworms on needle evergreens and scale on euonymus shrubs.  Vegetables and flowers are battling caterpillars, squash beetles, Harlequin bugs, aphids, spider mites, beetles, crickets, leaf hoppers, and thrips.  In the yard or on our pets we are confronting ticks and fleas, while the mosquitoes are mobilizing for their morning and evening blood sucking parties. 

Most every insect control works best on a certain stage or age of insect and may not control all stages of the insect requiring multiple applications to get their population back under control.  Most insects are easiest to control when they are very young or immature.  Bagworms for example, are much easier to control when small than after they get larger and are securely nested in their large, thick bags.  Be on the lookout for insect, disease or varmint problems, try to catch them as early as possible and decide on a plan of action based on your tolerance for insect or disease damage and how much you are willing to share with the rest of nature.

Plant, mulch, control your pests then please take time to enjoy your yard and garden as you harvest your bounty of beauty and food.

We are back in the 90’s but thankfully most Oklahoma gardens and farms were blessed with some very nice soaking rains over the last two weeks.  We can water our trees, shrubs, vegetables and lawns and witness the color and renewed life the water provides to the plant world.  Good rains are even more nourishing and satisfying to our plants.  It is fun to witness them turn greener almost overnight, to see the flush of new growth and flowers that follow a good rain.  Some rains and the cooler temperatures they bring stimulate such new vigor you can almost watch your tomatoes, begonias and other plants grow.  

We are likely to be entering a period of warmer temperatures and may even see hot, dry winds with some regularity so watering and mulching will grow in importance over the next few months. 

You can still plant most all kinds of annuals, perennials, herbs, warm season vegetables, trees, shrubs and summer lawns as long as your are prepared to water them after planting and regularly as needed as we confront the challenges of summer.  Many plants actually grow well in the heat and bright light as long as they get adequate moisture.  Many cities and towns in central and western Oklahoma are on water rationing so you do need to pay attention to the odd/even days or other water rationing rules.  There are many things we gardeners can do to reduce water use and well established shade trees and other plantings actually reduce home energy use, help lower summer temperatures, provide cover for the earth to prevent blowing dirt and dust while they slow storm water and help moisture soak into the soil.

Adding peat moss, compost or other organic matter to the soil before planting will dramatically increase your soil water holding capacity and reduce how often you have to water and the amount of water needed.  Mulching the top of the soil in your flowerbeds, containers or hanging baskets with natural mulch like cottonseed, pecan or cocoa hulls or a layer of pine, oak or fir bark will act like a comforter for your plantings to reduce water evaporation from the soil, to cool the soil and hold moisture from rains or watering in the root zone of your soil.  A 1-1/2” to 3” thick layer of one of the many bark or hull mulches will often reduce your water by half or more.  A bonus is that a good cover of mulch does more to reduce and limit weed competition than most any other gardening practice.  Another bonus is the additional organic matter it adds to the soil as it decomposes or as you turn it over into the soil and as you plant in it. 

Most plants need about an inch of water per week during the growing season to grow and fruit to their potential.  If Mother Nature provides that in rain – you don’t have to water that week.  If Mother Nature is stingy with the rain you may need to help out with hand watering, sprinklers or drip irrigation.  Hand watering affords you, as the gardener, with the most control as you can water some plants more and some less depending on the plant, soil type, heat and wind intensity.  Sprinklers of many times work good, but waste water as more is lost to evaporation, wind and on some plants or walkways that may not need water or as much water.  A drip system takes more work to design and install in the beginning but they often use half to two thirds less water to grow as good or better veggies, fruit trees, grapes and plants.

I hope you will make time to get outside to plant, mulch, and water as you enjoy the food and beauty in your own yard and our community.

Container grown plants can be planted year round and we are currently in the middle of the prime spring planting season.  You can plant color annuals, perennials, warm season vegetables, shrubs, trees, Bermuda grass lawns, container gardens now and enjoy a high success rate with your plantings.  In another month we will have to focus more of our attention on watering and battling the insects but now we can make a huge impact by planting new plant materials.  We plant annuals and vegetables to enjoy now as we feed our stomachs and our souls.  We plant perennials, shrubs and trees to enjoy now but really as an investment in the future to enjoy in the years and decades ahead as they grow ever more impressive with time.  Trees make such a lasting and growing impact that they are celebrated in poems, stories and song as a gift to our children and future generations.  Some people worry the planting season is over after Mother’s Day, others say Memorial Day ends the planting season but that is just not true when planting container grown plant material.  Oklahomans planting now have not even lost that much time to early planters this year as we have had many cool nights in the mid forties just over a week ago.  Do not forget to water your new plantings thoroughly after planting and regularly as needed.  Remember the hotter, drier and windier it gets the more water your new plantings will require.  

If you are hosting guests and want to add extra color to your patio, porch, balcony, on the driveway or at other fun spots around your yard, plant container gardens.  Choose your containers, fill with high quality, well drained soil mix and use your imagination to select a pretty plant or combination of plants to liven up your yard.  Large containers that hold more soil volume are easier to maintain as they will dry out less often.  The choices in large containers continue to improve every year as more people get in on the container gardening experience.  Most large container gardens will feature a tall plant in the center of the container surrounded by several shorter plants or cascading plants. 

You can make year round planters with a juniper, cedar or broad leaf shrub as the focal plant or you can use all annuals to maximize your color between now and the first freeze next November.  Many folks are now doing container gardens of vegetables only or veggies in combination with color plants.  It is not only fun to harvest your own peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, strawberries and herbs from your very own container garden on the balcony of your apartment or outside the patio door but it is especially healthy and satisfying to eat fresh, fully ripened produce you grew yourself. 

Many of the early spring plantings have now rooted in well and are producing a burst of spring growth.  Take time to enjoy the many natural wonders and the beauty in your yard as you do more planting and make sure your plants get the life affirming water they need as the season progresses.