Wayside Gardens Voices

Dealing With Mosquitoes In Your Garden

If you have a mosquito problem, it is likely that you are breeding them in your own garden. Taking a few small preventative measures and eliminating possible breeding spots will greatly reduce the number of mosquitoes plaguing your outdoor spaces.

Remove possible breeding sites.

Mosquitoes must have haves standing water for laying eggs and maturing larvae. Most often the source may not be obvious. Buckets, barrels, garbage cans, or pools of standing water left by a leaky faucet could be causing your problem.

Flush out birdbaths at least once a week. Make sure you roof gutters and your street gutters stay clear and clean. Do not water your lawn too often letting water pool for days at a time. If you live in a particularly rainy area, you may want to fill in low spots that tend to puddle, or you could even plant a few moisture loving plants to soak up the excess water.

Welcome mosquito predators.

Mosquitoes' natural predators include birds, bats, dragonflies, and fish. Dragonflies and bats are probably going to be your biggest allies.

Place birdhouses and bat-houses in your backyard to entice them to stay around and eat your mosquitoes. A single bat can eat a few hundred mosquitoes in one night.

Dragonflies usually habit the same places as mosquitoes, but planting a few water plants can make them feel a little more at home. You can try cattails, bulrushes, or any other tall grassy water plants that is native to your area.

If you have a pond or a large enough water feature stocking with mosquitofish and guppies will greatly reduce the frequency of mosquito larvae. Dragonfly larvae will also feed on the mosquito larvae.

Summer Gardening: Trimming and Dead-Heading

Summer is the time to enjoy your garden - everything is growing, blooming, and ripening to that a point where everything will be out of your hands, downhill to autumn and winter. Make it last as long as you can by trimming and deadheading your flowering shrubs, trees, and perennials in the summer to stimulate new growth and blooms, keeping your garden looking fresh right up to the first bite of frost.

Keeping hedges and shrubs trimmed promotes fuller growth and keeps your plants looking neat and healthy. Removing unsightly old growth allows the young new growth underneath to reap the full benifit of the sunlight. Removing spent blossoms from flowering plants throughout the summer allows the plant to focus on new growth a keep blooming. Don't be afraid to prune and trim throughout the summer -- trimming is not only good for the plant, but keeps your garden looking nice and clean.

How to Keep Deer out of Your Garden

Around this time of year, after most gardens have been planted, we start to get questions about plant care and gardening tips. The one question that Wayside Gardens' customers seem to ask more than any other is, "How do I keep deer out of my garden?"

The depressing truth is that deer are like goats when they are hungry; they will eat just about anything, even plants they don't like. Here are the three most effective tips that I share every year for dealing with foraging deer:

1. Plant Deer-Resistant Plants.

Basically, make your neighbor's garden slightly more appealing than your own. Plant strongly perfumed flowers and strongly fragrant trees, things deer will find repulsive.

2. Use a Fence.

Deer can jump really high, but don't make it easy for them. 6 feet is a deterrent, and 8 feet is a solution.

3. Own a Dog.

Talking with the master gardeners and horticulturists on staff, the consensus is that a dog is the best deer repellent you can buy, especially if it is a big dog that mostly stays outside. But even the scent of a little dog in your yard will keep away most grazers.

For more information check our online Plant Care Library.

Turn your Garden into a Wildlife Habitat

You don't have to live in a witch's cottage to grow a garden hospitable to local wildlife. Whether big or small, your humble courtyard or patio can be teeming with life in a single season. Once you've created your backyard conservatory, you can have it certified by the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) and receive a very official-looking plaque to display in your garden for all your new squirrelly friends to see.

Making a garden more creature friendly is simple. Just provide everything the animals need to be comfortable, and they will stay. The NWF requires that you provide food, water, cover, a place to raise young, and sustainable gardening practices to be declared a Certified Wildlife Habitat^TM.

1. Food
   Foliage, nectar, seeds, and berries are pretty easy to supply. Native wildflowers, herbaceous perennials, and your favorite berry vines and bushes will cover all the bases. You can also supplement with feeders if you like.
2. Water
   This one is tricky because, though you want the birds to have their baths and the frogs to have their ponds, giving the mosquitoes their nest will probably make you want to toss the NWF and their fancy certification. Two possible approaches: create running water features, because mosquitoes are not as likely to breed in moving water, or make your habitat more hospitable to animals that eat mosquitoes (birds, bats, frogs, and lovely little spiders) than to the mosquitoes themselves.
3. Cover
   Wild animals might want to eat your food and drink your water, but they don't want to look at you. Give the animals a place to hide from people, predators, and bad weather. Low, leafy shrubs and perennials work well.
4.  A Place to Raise Their Young
   This can be a simple shady little bush for butterflies or a big fancy store-bought birdhouse. Learn about native birds and placement of birdhouses; sometimes height and size are very important to certain species. Bat caves, frog ponds, and creepy-crawly rock piles also fall into this category.
5. Sustainable Gardening Practices
   We've all heard of growing green. Compost. Mulch. Don't use too many chemicals. If you have created a proper habitat, it should be mostly self-sustaining. Just a little trimming, mulching, and composting is all it should need. Your wildlife garden will feature mostly low-maintenance native plants, and hopefully, most of your unwanted pests will be feeding your intended wildlife tenants.

Getting certified
Once you meet all five of these requirements you can apply to have your garden certified as a NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat^TM.

Ground Cover Plants Make Life Easier

A clean, well-maintained landscape generally takes a great deal of work.  There are always some areas that take a lot more work than others: sunny spots with plants that need to be watered every day (or more) in the summer, shady spots where grass just won't grow, slopes that make mowing a huge hassle, areas that are easy to see but hard to get to for maintenance.  All of these things can easily take a lot of the fun out of gardening, often forcing us to either pretend that those areas aren't there or obsess over them.

In many cases, though, there is a simple, elegant solution.  There are many Ground Cover Plants that are low maintenance and add great beauty to difficult areas.  Ground covers can take the place of mulch at the base of many other plants, keeping their roots cool and helping to retain moisture in the soil.  Many ground covers, such as Vinca minor, thrive in part or full shade, spreading to softly carpet difficult or out-of-the-way areas.  In many cases ground cover perennials require far less water and maintenance than grass, and they are becoming a popular substitute to save time, money, or even the environment.

Japanese Beetles: Clean Green Demise

If you don't feel like using chemicals in your garden, you can control Japanese beetles naturally. There is the old standby, knocking them into a bucket of soapy water with a stick. They will be unable to fly out of the soapy water and will drown eventually. Usually the little holes that insects use to breath, called spiracles, are too small for water to enter, but the soap fixes that problem. This procedure works best during the cooler parts of the day when the beetles are less likely to fly away from the plants.

A naturally occurring bacteria called Milky Spore kills Japanese beetle grubs which feed underground on grass and plant roots (ha ha, they're getting you from the ground up). It is safe for beneficial insects, pets, and children. The bacteria spreads slowly through the soil, killing beetle larvae for many years. Milky Spore is sold as a dust which may be called Doom, Grub Attack, or Grub Killer. It is more effective in warmer areas of the country where the soil stays warm most of the summer (USDA Hardiness zones 6-10).

For more Gardening Supplies and suggestions Visit Waysidegardens.com

Evergreen Shrubs Keep Gardens Beautiful

For a lasting impression and year-round interest try evergreen shrubs. We are all familiar with hollies and boxwoods, the classic short hedges, the ones that reliably maintain there deep colors all year long. The reliability of evergreens is great for landscaping because it reduces the amount of maintenance required to keep an aesthetically pleasing garden.

If you want something a little more interesting than the monochromatic boxwood, opt for a plant that flowers and produces fruit. For instance, hollies periodically produce those lovely red berries (which also attract birds). Gardenias and Rhododendrons produce large fragrant blooms, and provide a little more interest than your standard evergreen.

If you want an evergreen shrub that has interesting architecture, try a juniper. Junipers are amazingly hardy and their habit varies tremendously from one cultivar to the next. Juniperus 'Skyrocket' grows 15 feet straight in the air not getting any wider than 18 inches. In this area there is a common ground covers varieity. They are a related to cypress but are generally much shorted and have very interesting, gnarled trunks and a fairly unpredictable habit.

Summer Gardening Tips

Here are a couple of real simple tips to keep in mind as you potter around your garden this summer.

Watering Your Garden

If your climate usually exhibits high humidity, don't water in the evening, the dew will set and the moisture will not evaporate, leaving your plants moist all night long-- may lead to fungal growth. For hot and dry weather, you should water deeply once a week to promote deep root growth. Daily light waterings may lead to shallow root growth, which will cause your plants to dry out more quickly. The best time to water is in the morning, before the heat of the day. This should prepare your plants for the evaporation from the sun and winds it will experience throughout the day.

Trimming, Dead-Heading and Pruning

Keeping hedges and shrubs trimmed promotes fuller growth and keeps your plants looking neat and healthy. Dead-head throughout the summer to allow plant to focus on new growth a keep blooming. Don't be afraid to prune and trim throughout the summer-- keeping shrub growth in check is not only good for the plant, but keeps your garden looking very neat and structured.

For more garden tips, take a look at these great books from top Garden Writers:

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust
The Essential Garden Maintainence Workbook by Rosemary Alexander

Wayside Gardens Ground Covers

If you are looking for a way to make your flower beds a little more interesting, you should try a ground cover plant. They prevent weeds from growing and help to control erosion. They are also an excellent way to make your garden projects look lush and complete.

If you think that the classic green foliage of ivy or sweet flag is not showy enough for your garden, you could always try a flowering ground cover. Flowering ground-covers come in various colors to compliment your garden, and some of them, like Rose Salmon Vigorosa, a creeping rose, can be interesting all by itself.

If you would like to browse through a few ground covers to see if you can find something that fits your garden check out this link: Ground Covers

John Durst
Wayside Gardens Voice

Wayside Gardens Evergreens

Just a short while ago, I posted about my love for evergreens, and I just wanted to follow up and let you know what was available from Wayside Gardens. While all of the trees are very interesting a beutiful, we have a few that serve a secondary function. Our privacy/wind screen trees can be an elegant natural way to fence in your garden. We offer Thuja Green Giants, a quick growing tree that really lives up to its name; the Thuja Steeplechase, a lush full privacy tree; and the Leyland Cypress, the classic privacy screen tree.

Wayside also offers many beautiful ornamentals that will bring plenty of interesting form and architecture to a front entrance or back patio. These trees will add year-round texture and height in any garden. As I said before, evergreens always carry ancient or classic connotations, and they will add class and interest to any area. Check out the Degroots Spire of the Ilex Sky pencil, these are my favorite ornamental evergreens. Look for more at Wayside Gardens Evergreens