Cooling Down

I ran into a Horticulture Hotline reader the other day and he mentioned that his wife always put the article where he sits for breakfast to be sure he read it each week. So I guess it is time for the Horticulture Hotline disclaimer.

For the new readers of the Horticulture Hotline, my To Do Lists are designed to help you target a few activities in your yard and in your home that will benefit you in the future, giving you more free time.  These lists are not designed to interfere with high school, college, or professional football games, soccer, baseball, fishing, shrimping, hunting, golfing, eating chicken wings at a local sports bar, oyster roasts, or watching NASCAR on the couch with closed eyes!  This is not designed to be a “honey do” list. 

Large Patch Fungus (Brown Patch Fungus) is attacking lawns across the Lowcountry.  I rode through several neighborhoods this week and saw it everywhere.  These cooler nights make conditions right for this disease.  Fungi like moisture and it has been raining a lot recently.  If you can let your grass dry out between watering, you will have less fungus (I understand this is not easy to do with rainfall).  There are organic products that will increase the bio-diversity in the soil and help control Large Patch Fungus (Neptune Harvest Crab shell, SeaHume, and Back to Nature’s Cotton Burr based products).  If you have an active infestation, a combination of Cleary’s and Disarm are good chemistries to rotate.

If you plan to plant bulbs this fall, purchase them now while the selection is good.  Look for bigger bulbs.  Bigger bulbs equal bigger plants.  When planting, try 04-04-04 Sustane in the hole.  Use Mighty Plant on the foliage to help create a bigger bulb next year. 

Worms are still chowing on lawns. They like to feed under the cover of rainfall when it is darker and birds are less apt to see them. There has been a lot of spotty attacks this year. If you travel during the fall, you might want to use something preventatively because worms can do a lot of damage quickly.

The wet, cooler weather will also run roaches and rodents into your home.  If you are prone to be attacked by these two pests be sure to prepare for their arrival. 

Moles always get more active in the fall.  Manage their food source with Lebanon Insect Control and use Repellex around the perimeter to keep them out of your yard.

Now is the time to put out your fall fertilizer for your trees, shrubs and turf. Fall fertilization is very important for the health of your plants, trees and lawns. 

Now that the weather has cooled down, it is a good time to redefine your bed lines, prune anything that has gone wild over the summer, sharpen your mower blade, and pull any vines that are strangling your plants.  

Have you put out a preemergent product for winter weeds yet? Mosquitoes?

If this sounds like too much work, hire a professional.

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

Bill Lamson-Scribner can be reached during the week at Possum’s Landscape and Pest Control Supply. Possum’s has three locations 481 Long Point Rd in Mt. Pleasant (971-9601), 3325 Business Circle in North Charleston (760-2600), or 606 Dupont Rd, in Charleston (766-1511). Bring your questions to a Possum’s location, or visit us at http://www.possumsupply.com. You can also call in your questions to “ The Garden Clinic”, Saturdays from noon to 1:00, on 1250 WTMA  (The Big Talker). The Horticulture Hotline is available 24 / 7 at possumsupply.com. 

Stockings on My Tree

Here’s a version of a question I have been getting the last few weeks:

 “While looking over my crepe myrtle (could be oak, maple, etc) the other day, I noticed a large group of black bugs on the bark of my tree and a fine tight webbing.  None of my leaves appeared to be eaten.  When I tried to scare them away with a branch, they scattered and then regrouped back on the tree.  This group of black bugs has me worried.  This is one of my favorite trees and I do not want anything bad to happen to it.  Do you have any ideas as to what these bugs are and why they are on my tree?”

Not to worry!  It sounds like you have tree cattle or barklice (louse).  These are good guys.  The tree cattle clean the tree by eating dead organic matter and lichens (algae and moss combination) out of the bark crevices of the tree.  Even though crepe myrtles have smooth bark, there are plenty of places for the tree cattle to find food.  They are the housecleaners of the trees! Maples are another favorite tree of the tree cattle.

These are the same bugs that produce that stocking like webbing that looks like something out of a horror movie.  The webbing is tight against the bark of the tree just like a stocking.  It is found on limbs as well as trunks of trees.  The tree cattle use this webbing as protection from predators and weather. 

Tree cattle do not harm a tree. They do not eat leaves, just dead organic matter.  If they are really bugging you, you could spray them with a blast of water.  I would let them clean the bark of the tree, so you do not have excessive organic debris buildup.

If you have a lot of lichens, you may want to check the general health of the tree. Lichens produce their own food like plants. So if you have a healthy thick canopy of foliage from the tree, lichens will not grow because they cannot get the sunlight they need to survive. A soil test and the appropriate fertilizer should help with this situation unless the tree has other cultural issues (compacted soils, wet soils, dry soil, planted incorrectly or in the wrong place …).  

Last week, I laid to rest many fall army worms. They attacked my yard as well as my mother’s yard and my counter attack proved to be too much for them for now. They are known to launch a counter attack, so in a week or so I will launch a preemptive strike (if all goes as planned). I do not want to go out of town and return to a chowed on lawn.

The daylight hours are getting shorter. Time to get your preemergent product of choice out for winter annual weeds. Remember to treat your beds as well as your lawn.

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

Bill Lamson-Scribner can be reached during the week at Possum’s Landscape and Pest Control Supply. Possum’s has three locations 481 Long Point Rd in Mt. Pleasant (971-9601), 3325 Business Circle in North Charleston (760-2600), or 606 Dupont Rd, in Charleston (766-1511). Bring your questions to a Possum’s location, or visit us at http://www.possumsupply.com. You can also call in your questions to “ The Garden Clinic”, Saturdays from noon to 1:00, on 1250 WTMA  (The Big Talker). The Horticulture Hotline is available 24 / 7 at possumsupply.com. 

Fall Army Worms and Preemergent Products for Winter Weeds

This is what I wrote two weeks ago after I had sprayed my beds with herbicide mix for three hours and I was then hit by a pop up thunderstorm:

“While spraying in my beds, I did notice a huge number of moths, which usually indicates a worm attack is not too far away. Time to get out a little preventive worm killer it looks like. If you have ever experienced worm damage, you know it hits your lawn hard and fast, so preventative applications will keep you from having any surprises if you go out of town or even take a long nap! The worm season so far this year has been weird – very spotty.”

Well, I got busy with other things. Sure enough, I went out to check on what vines I was going to attack Sunday and there was a small fall army worm outbreak in my yard.

A friend of mine that grew hay used to say he could hear army worms munching on the pasture as they crossed the fields. Since army worms eat the green leaves off the plant, he would lose big hay dollars to this worm. Athletic fields, Golf Courses, and home lawns lose the aesthetic value of the green grass, and the worms thin the canopy of the grass where weeds will move in if given a chance. Prostrate growing weeds like spurge, lespedeza and Florida Betony seem to come in the fastest.

What bothers me the most is you work all summer on your grass to have it looking nice, and once it starts to slow down for the winter, fall army worms and then sod web worms attack the grass. Look for areas that appeared to have been mowed low and with a dull blade. You can see that the leaf blades have been chewed. Also thatch type debris will be churned up on the surface. Birds and low flying wasps are also predators of army worms. Thanks to cell phones last year, I took a cool picture of a wasp attacking the head of an army worm.

Since army worms are in direct contact with the ground, they are very easy to control. Bug Blaster, Bifen, Sevin, Cyonara and Acephate will all put a hurting on army worms. Thuricide (Bt) and Spinosad are organic products that will also work well if you get them while the worms are small. Since the population of worms is so high and hit so hard, keep your eye out for a second hatching.

For those of you with St. Augustine and Centipede, keep your eye out for the sod web worm. Watch for moths in your yard around dusk. If you begin to see a moth that gets out of the grass, flies for 6-10 feet then lands again (like a bobwhite quail for you bird hunters) you may want to consider using one of the above mentioned products. Usually sod web worms would not come out until September / October; however, with the crazy weather we are having, scouting for them could not hurt.

Now is the time to put out preemergent products in the lawn and beds to prevent those small seeded annual weeds. Henbit, chickweed, Poa annua (annual bluegrass), cudweed and lawn burweed are a few of the winter weeds that would like to occupy your lawn and flower beds. Poa annua (the green grass that is very visible in February and March) and lawn burweed (the prostrate growing weed that develops a sticker) are usually the most hated of the winter weeds. Some people use profanity while describing them at the counter of Possum’s! 

If your yard has thatch, drainage, or compaction issues, now is a great time to aerate your lawn (and beds where possible) before you apply your fall preemerge. Aeration is a great cultural practice, which will among other things help your roots grow throughout the winter giving you a head start for the spring. 

In my travels this week, I saw brown patch (large patch) fungus in several yards, and the “nasty rascal the chinch bug” is still sucking the life out of many lawns. Gray leaf spot is still alive and doing well.

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