Time To Get Ready For 2014

Are you ready for the 2014 season in your yard?

Here are a few things to do on these nice winter days.

·        Get soil tested – for everyone that has not already.

·        Kill winter weeds now while they are young and your grass is dormant.

·        Take mower in to have serviced to beat the Spring rush. With the new ethanol gas lawn mower engines and other engines have had issues. No one likes their mechanic to tell them, “pick it up in 4 weeks.”

·        Keep leaves off lawn areas. Keeps moisture from being trapped and if you or your lawn service are applying products, you will have a more uniform coverage without the leaves.

·        Move any shrub or tree now before it is too late. Root prune now, move before they start putting on new growth. Try DieHard Transplant to help survival.

·         Spray trees and shrubs with paraffinic oil (ultra-fine, Omni Supreme oil) as opposed to petroleum oils (Volck) to control over-wintering insects. Watch temperatures. If you have ongoing issues with scale, aphids, white flies, or other sucking bugs, try Safari or Dominion for long term control. Neem oil works on diseases as well as insects.

·        Have you tried Lime / Sulfur spray around the ground of deciduous plants that get diseased? Roses and blueberries are two good examples of plants that benefit from this sanitation practice.

·        Sharpen pruning tools or purchase new ones.

·        If you haven’t already, get your bulbs in the ground.

·        Apply SeaHume to turf, trees, flowers, and shrubs. Adding organics now will help in the spring. Cotton Burr Compost?

·        Re-do bed lines to reflect maturing landscape.

·        Get bird house ready for nesting birds.

·        Have moles, get Mole Patrol – it really works.

·        Have deer, get Deer Stopper – it really works.

·        Check irrigation or get on professional’s list to check. Be sure the heads are pointed the right way. Can you eliminate (turn off) the zone watering the shrubs and trees? Have you tried wetting agents to lower your water bill (we hear between 30 and 60 percent)? Less water equals less disease.

·        Prune Crepe Myrtles – don’t butcher them. Remove crossing (rubbing) limbs, inward growing limbs and diseased limbs. Topping or reducing their height is not considered proper pruning.

·        Hold off on pruning plants damaged by the cold – we could still have freezing temperatures.

·        Test well for salt.

·        Attend meetings of the Rose, Camellia, Horticultural Societies and other like horticultural societies. Sunday (Feb 2) at 3:00, Bob Lundberg is going to put on a free Rose Pruning Seminar. Bob and his wife Sandy are Nationally (World?)  known rose growers with about 400 roses of their own. The seminar will be held at 3351 Maybank Highway in the Berkeley Electric Co-op office. Any questions, stop by a Possum’s and pick up a flyer or call Roselinda at 843 789 9268 or visit www.charlestonrose.com.

·        Get ready to preemerge in February. Kill small seeded summer annual weeds before they take over your landscape.

·        Get out and enjoy our County, State and City parks as well as our local plantations.

Moles

Moles are always a hot topic in the Lowcountry.

  I still recommend a 3 prong approach when controlling moles for the less adventurous.  These 3 steps are:

1. Kill the mole
2. Manage its food source
3. Repel other moles from your yard

Moles tunnel through your yard looking for food.  They usually have several main runs through your yard as well as secondary tunnels.  The secondary tunnels are where they collect their food and once they have a gone down a secondary tunnel they will not return to that tunnel.  In order to kill a mole with bait or a trap, you must be able to locate the main tunnel.

The best way to locate the main runs is to take a stick and poke holes in the tunnels in your yard.  Next, mark where you made these holes.  The next morning come and check to see if the holes are plugged, then you know you have a main tunnel.  The mole will only plug holes on the main tunnel.  That evening, open up one of the holes that the mole plugged the night before and place bait 5 feet on either side of the hole that you reopened.  When the mole comes back to re-plug the hole it will have to walk right over the bait.  These baits are very tasty to the mole, so the mole will usually eat the bait and die.

Three baits that we regularly hear good results about are Mole Patrol, poison worms and Talpirid.  I prefer Mole Patrol because it is one third the price and has 6 times the amount of bait placement as Talpirid.  Stay away from poison peanuts.  Moles do not eat peanuts, they eat insects and worms.

Controlling the food source is the next most important factor in managing moles on your property.  Depending on which doctor (PHD) you believe, the mole eats 85-125% of its body weight every day.  In human terms a 100 lb. person would eat 85-125 lbs of food per day. That is a lot of food!  Using a product like Lebanon Insect Control or Aloft on a regular basis will do a good job in managing the mole’s food source.  Monitor your insect populations with a soap solution to determine how often you need to apply insecticides.  Use two ounces of lemon dish detergent in a five gallon bucket of water and pour slowly over your soil in the areas where you think you might have insects and see what comes to the surface.  Some products get tied up in the thatch to kill surface insects (like ants), so be sure to get a product for sub-surface insects.

Castrol products (Mole Repellent, Repellex Mole,Vole and Gopher Repellent) and other repellents (Mole Stopper) work good as perimeter treatments to keep moles from re-infesting your property. Be sure there are not any moles on your property before you put out this barrier or you will trap them inside your landscape.  Make a 10-20 foot band treatment around the perimeter of your property.  Reapply these repellents as the label recommends. 

If you yard is free of moles right now, you can skip #1 and just manage their food source and repel them at the perimeter of your property.  Be sure your yard is free of moles before you skip #1 in this process.  If you take away the mole’s food source and he is in your yard already, he will really tear up your yard looking for food!

If all this sounds like too much work, try the smoke bombs or hire a professional!

Always read, understand and follow product label. The product label is a Federal Law.

Christmas Cactus

Christmas Cactus, one of the plants called Holiday Cactus which include Thanksgiving Cactus and Easter Cactus, can provide a great show of tubular flowers over the holidays.  Once they have finished blooming let them rest until April, when you will want to start fertilizing them regularly through the summer and into fall.  Keep them in a cool room with a good amount of sunlight.  Although they are a cactus, they are a tropical cactus, meaning that they are not as drought tolerant as the desert cactus.  They should be watered when the top half of the soil in the pot feels dry.  Be careful not to over or under water the cactus. 

Over the summer (any time the nights are above 45 degrees – which also could mean all winter!), keep them outside without a lot of direct sun.  If they get too much direct sun you will notice their leaves turn red.   During the summer you can also encourage more flowers by pruning a few sections of each stem.  You can then place these pieces in vermiculite and they will root very quickly, giving you some holiday gifts.  After your new plants have rooted, grow them out in a standard succulent potting mix.

Christmas cactus, like the Poinsettia is a short day plant.  This means it flowers once the days start to get shorter.  Beginning mid-October, you want to keep your cactus in a dark area for 15 hours away from street, car or any other lights that may disrupt this dark period.  You will also need to keep the night temperature below 70 degrees.  A Christmas Cactus is unique in that if you lived in the right area you could get it to flower just by maintaining cool temperatures (50-55 degrees) for about 6 weeks. 

Once the Christmas Cactus begins to bloom, keep it in a cool well lit room away from any heat or vents, drafts or fireplaces.  Be sure to let the plant dry out in between watering; however, not get too dry or the flower buds might drop.  If you water them too much, they will drop off as well.   

The Christmas Cactus has very few pests.  If you have stored it outside during the summer, you might want to clean it with an insecticidal soap prior to bringing it into your house.  This will keep any mealy bugs or scale from hitch-hiking a ride into your home.  The largest problem they have seems to be the same as any cactus; they are either over or under watered.  Using a good succulent potting soil and getting your finger dirty will help you avoid this problem.

Moles anyone?

ActiveGuard Mattress Liners - "Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite"

One product that I failed to mention when I was listing the Top Products of 2013 is ActiveGuard Mattress Liners. This product has made so many people be able to fulfill the saying, “good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite” that it is unreal. ActiveGuard Mattress Liners also control dust mites that can trigger asthma.

ActiveGuard Mattress Liners were develop as an extension of the globally use mosquito nets (many of which Bill Gates has funded to wipe out malaria).

These mattress liners are easy for one person to put on a bed or box spring. The liner is basically a fitted sheet and is way easier to deal with than an encasement that requires you to put a mattress or box spring in a ‘big bag’ that zippers shut (mattresses are heavy and big so not too easy for most people). Mattresses and box springs are very expensive. With the ActiveGuard Mattress Liners you do not have to throw away your mattress and box springs.

I look at ActiveGuard Mattress Liners as the preemergent / post emergent control of the bedbug world. If you have an infestation, you can put on an ActiveGuard Mattress Liner and many of the bedbugs will be dead within 24 hours. Some of the more resistant bedbugs could take up to 72 hours. Many hotels are using ActiveGuard Mattress Liners preventively to control bedbugs. The revenue lost in one night quickly pays for the liner.

ActiveGuard Mattress Liners work 24/7 for up to 2 years. Amazing! While you try to control the bedbugs in your house, you will be able to sleep easy on your own mattress. With the amount of people in tears that we have seen in Possum’s this is pretty inexpensive control.

This product is EPA Toxicology Category IV by all routes of exposure. Therefore no signal word nor Hazards to Humans and Domestic Animal Statements are required. The product does not repel bedbugs, it kills them.

If you have bedbugs or know someone who does, let them know about ActiveGuard Mattress Liners.

Always read, understand and follow product label. The product label is a Federal Law.