Murray Wood: Connecting with my granddaughter on the swing set
Murray Wood shared a trip to the park with his granddaughter on Sunday, reflecting on her almost limitless capacity for ...
Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Here are some questions and answers from the June 7 show:
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These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: Can I plant tomato, basil, and peppers all in one big pot?
A: Tomato and basil are a great combination to plant together. If you add a marigold in there, it will attract insects away from the vegetables, too.
You have to make sure your pot’s big enough, not only in width but in depth. For a tomato-basil-pepper planting, the pot should be at least 20 inches in diameter and about the same depth.
Lots of soil volume will hold consistent moisture. That’s one of the issues with vegetable gardening in a small pot is your moisture levels can be inconsistent. The larger the pot, the more consistent the soil moisture will be.
You might want to get a second pot and have them side by side — the tomato plant will get so big that it’ll basically crowd out the basil and pepper. You can use a tomato cage or a staking system to keep it structured so that it’s not going to shade your pepper plant.
Have your tomato plant on your north side and your pepper on your south side so that that pepper is going to get lots of sun and so it can produce fruit.
Q: Why is my plum tree full of flowers, not fruit?
A: It’s not getting good pollination. Okay. So that means having a second plum around or bringing a compatible pollinator much closer to your yard.
Currently, bees are likely travelling up to a kilometre to find another plum tree, causing the pollen to lose its potency by the time they visit your tree. To resolve this, you should plant a second plum tree, a western sand cherry, or a wild native plum nearby that will bloom at the exactly same time. A native plum called Prunus negra, is a good one.
Knowing your tree’s specific variety is essential for choosing the perfect companion, but it is impossible to identify a plum tree by its leaves alone. Identify it from the fruit.
Q: What are the white mushroom growths on the bark of my plum tree?
A: If you get mushrooms growing on the bark, that means the bark has been damaged either from sun scald or rabbits or some or disease causing the death of the bark.
If it is on the south or west side of the of the tree and then you know you got some sun scald and mushrooms feed off the dead bark. You can just leave it as it is, it’s not going to hurt the tree, but in the winter put a tree guard around the trunk so you don’t get more sun scald and more death.
If the area is oozing out sap, then you have a virus and then slowly the tree will die. If it’s on a branch that you can prune off and you still have another main branch, I would cut it off. Don’t put it in the compost, put it in the garbage.
Q: What causes hydrangea leaves to curl up tightly?
A: There’s a couple things it can be. It could be a moisture issue. And sometimes when you get curling up like that, the soil could be too wet.
Stick your index finger into the soil as far as you can and it should be moist. It shouldn’t be wet and it shouldn’t be bone dry either. You can use a piece of rebar because it has little ribs on it and it brings up a sample.
You don’t see mites very often on hydrangeas, but curling of the tips could be caused by a spider mite as well. You need a magnifying glass to see them. Look on the underside of the leaves, and you’ll see these little specks moving around. If you don’t have magnifying glass, you can take a white piece of paper and just tap your leaves on the paper.
Bug-X Out will work or End All, because it has an insecticidal soap and pyrethrin in it,as well as canola oil, so it coats the bugs and then stops them from reproducing.
Fertilize with a 30-10-10 fertilizer and add a little bit of aluminum sulfate to that water as well, too.
Q: We had to dig up some tulips. Do we plant them right back down or do we wait till fall?
A: Plant them right back down or if you have a cold storage area, you could put them into a pot and put them into cold storage, too. Let them grow in a pot for the summer and then put them in cold storage for the winter .
It’s really important to plant them at the same depth that they were originally and put in some bone meal with them when you plant.
Q: How can I grow great lettuces?
A: When you’re planting lettuce, sow your first row of seed and then wait about 14 days and plant another row about six inches beside it. Do that about three times, and then you’re constantly going to get lettuce.
Lettuce will tend to bolt with the heat no matter what, and once it starts to bolt, it gets bitter so decreasing the heat where it is planted is a really good idea or set up shading for your plants, like shade cloth.
Q: How can I get rid of Virginia creeper roots?
A: Dig them up. Once you dig them up and get most of the root out they won’t come back again because they the only way they will spread is when the branches touch the ground and then they get dirt over top of the branches.
The roots themselves don’t spread, so just pulling them up will control them easily, and then pulling that main root out will take care of the problem.
Because the branches are attached to the main plant, if you spray something like Roundup will kill the main plant, too.
Q: How do I deal with white fly on Virginia creeper?
A: Get a product called Bug-X Out. Spray in the evening, because if you spray them in the day they scoot off and you don’t really get them. You might have to spray again in 14 days because they have egg cycles, so you won’t get rid of them all in one shot. It’s going to take about three cycles of spray every 14 days to be able to get rid of them.
Q: My asparagus has gone to ferns. Should I be cutting it down and will it produce more spears?
A: You want to let it go to ferns and the spikes that come out of the ground. Wait until they’re about the size of a pencil or your pinky finger before you start harvesting your first ones. Sometimes it takes three to four years for you to be able to do that.
Every fall, they’re going to die back. You can cut them back at that point, but don’t cut them before they get nice and thick.
Q: My old apple tree has one branch where all the leaves are missing, and the blossoms look dried up. Do I cut that branch off?
A: If it’s totally dried up now there are probably some issues on the bark lower down. If the bark is starting to flake off a little bit or is a rusty colour, you need to take that branch off because if it is a disease — which I think it may be — it’ll just spread to the rest of the tree.
It might be a fire blight, and if it’s fire blight, it’ll spread to the rest of the tree very quickly.
Q: My old blue spring phlox only has about half its blooms, and the stems are dry and brown with green ends. Can I cut it back?
A: Absolutely you can cut it back. The dry, brown appearance is likely caused by overwatering, or by water sitting on the leaves, which causes the plant to rot a bit.
Phlox requires well-drained soil and should always be watered at the base rather than from overhead.
Q: How can I get rid of shoots coming up from the base of a Walker caragana?
A: The best thing to do is trim them right down. Then get a product called Advance or Top Gun. It’s basically a herbicidal soap and a herbicidal vinegar.
As soon as you get them start popping out of the soil or out of the base of the plant, spray them. It doesn’t hurt the plant but just burns off those leaves. Don’t let them get long, do it as soon as you see the leaves, then you don’t get the long sticks. All you can do is control, there’s no cure.
Q: How can I get rid of black knot on a chokecherry?
A: All you can do is you trim out black knot whenever you see it.
If it’s in the main trunk, the best thing to do is take a utility knife or chisel and cut it out, let it dry up completely, and then spray it over with the pruning paint in about two or three weeks when it’s dried.
You can spray dormant oil in April before the leaves bud out and that stops it from spreading, but you can only do that in the dormant season.
Q: Why are some of my asparagus shoots are turning brown and shrivelling?
A: It could be too much water in that area. The roots might be getting a little bit of root rot, and if you poke around in the soil, you’ll be able to tell.
The roots will start turning brown with soil problems, either being too wet or too dry. When it’s too dry, you’ll see the roots shrivelling, whereas if they’re wet, the roots will actually almost be flaking off.
Q: How do I thin the fruit on my overladen apple tree?
A: Wait until the apples begin to form clearly before you start thinning them out.
If you leave the tree alone, you will get a high volume of smaller apples, but removing enough young fruit so that they do not touch will result in fewer, larger apples.
Additionally, you should prune away any crossing branches and trim back high branches that make the fruit unreachable.
Q: How can I get rid of spider mite in cedar trees?
A: Blast them with cold water.
Large, visible webs on buildings or trees are generally created by beneficial garden spiders, which can be managed by blasting them with water or applying a pyrethrin-based spray to the structure’s base to prevent climbing.
In contrast, fine webbing associated with browning, dying foliage indicates a destructive spider mite infestation rather than garden spiders.
Q: How do I reseed my lawn?
A: The key is keeping it moist. Apply some Groundskeeper fertilizer at the same time as the grass seed. Get the green bag with the 10 phosphorus in it, because the red or orange bag doesn’t have any phosphorus and phosphorus will help the root development of the new grass seed. HumicKeeper is even better because it also has phosphorus.
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