Horticulture Hotline 10/01/18
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.
These lists are not designed to interfere with high school, college, or
professional football games, sunset boating, shrimping, hunting, golfing,
eating chicken wings at a local sports bar, oyster roasts, collecting oysters
or clams from the local waters, or watching NASCAR on the couch with closed eyes! This is not designed to be a “honey do” list.
Many of you will be changing out annual color in the next
few weeks. While the beds are empty, you have to chance to amend your soil for
better flower production and address any drainage problems. If the bed stays
wet, this is a good time to raise it with the addition of soil or amendments.
You can also crown the bed so it drains off to the sides.
Back To Natures’ Flower Bed Amendment has proven to do a
superb job in our Lowcountry soils. The special blend of composted cotton
burrs, composted cattle manure, feather meal, cottonseed meal, and alfalfa meal
has the best of gardeners coming back for more. Alfalfa contains Triacantanol,
a natural growth enhancer, and is high in organic Nitrogen to get your plants
growing. Flower Bed amendment may also help in the suppression and control of
certain fungal diseases.
Here is what Dr. Herman Daniell had to say about his
experience with the product, “The cotton burr flower bed mulch with amendments
has been a superior product for my rose garden. I have had healthier bushes
with more blooms since I began using this product.”
Many of you will also be changing out containers, hanging
baskets and potted plants. A good potting soil is key to your success. Happy
Frog and Ocean Forest have become very popular at Possum’s. These soils have a
great combination of beneficial microbes. If your plants are in an exposed place
requiring daily watering, consider adding Soil Moist or other water holding
gels to your soil. These gels and the use of a wetting agent like Possum’s
Wetting Agent + Biostimulants can make your life much easier. If you go away
for the weekend, your plants will hardly miss you.
If you applied preemergent herbicides in August, put your
follow up application out eight to ten weeks later. We have a very long season
for weed seeds to germinate here, so you must keep that protective barrier in
place. Up North the soil gets too cold for the winter weeds to germinate after
a short window of time; however, here the window of opportunity for those pesky
winter weeds stays open much longer.
The temperatures seemed to have dropped down to an
acceptable range for applying Weed Free Zone and other post emergent products
(check your local forecast and product label). Virginia Buttonweed is always a
challenge this time of year. If nutgrass AKA sedge is still a pain in your
grass, now is a good time to control it. Florida Betony is a weed that you
should definitely spray now before it has time to replenish the tubers it has
underground.
I can see I got a little too fired up writing about Flower
Bed Amendment, so I will have to continue this To Do List next week. If you try
the Flower Bed Amendment, you will see why so many people rave about the
benefits of using this organic product.
