Ladybugs - Part 3 of The Aphid Triad

Did you know that ladybugs hibernate for winter? Well, the technical term is "diapause" but it's basically the same thing, only in diapause the insects aren't just in a deep slumber, they can actually freeze then thaw out & come back to life in spring.

Ladybugs are the absolute BEST weapon against aphids. Anyone who's had a problem with aphids knows that you can see just a couple of aphids on a plant and 2 days later the plant is so covered in aphids you can't see the plant anymore. See "The Aphid Triad Part 1: Aphids" for why this is.

AND this is also why it's soooo important to be ultra-careful if you have an indoor garden, most notably if you are trying to grow lettuces or arugula year-round, or get an early start on petunias inside. I made the mistake of bringing a small petunia inside a few years ago in the fall. Despite the fact that it didn't survive, a few moths later, in the dead of winter, I sowed a flat full of Arugula seeds to have on hand to add to Couscous or contribute to my home grown & store-bought spring mix type salads that I love... until the day I walked into my grow room, and there was my arugula ... COVERED in aphids. I almost cried.

If only I could have kept ladybugs in my grow room, but they would have eaten all the aphids then immediately died, unfortunately.

Ladybugs are one of the best controls for aphids, not only to keep it natural, but all those sprays people have spent years spraying everywhere have killed off A LOT of our beneficial insects, like solitary native bees, ladybugs, and I hate to admit it, but also yellow jackets & wasps (they will eat grasshoppers & larger pest bugs, so as much as they can be pretty bad, they are also somewhat helpful). I an not shaming anyone who has to sometimes use sprays, but there are too many people that just kill off EVERYTHING in the yard as a prophylactic measure "Bad bugs can't eat my plants if there are NO BUGS, muahahaha". 

That is never a good thing.

On the other hand, I no longer recommend anyone to buy ladybugs from any given garden centre or online store, because MOST of the sources have been selling the invasive Asian Lady Beetles, that are not so beneficial. (They bite, too, unlike our native ladybugs!)

Your best bet is to make your yard a habitat instead of just a yard. 

Build "Ladybug Hotels" in the fall! Leave some of your perennials to die off naturally, even maybe putting a few handfuls of fallen tree leaves at the base & put a few small sticks on top to hold them there. 

CAVEAT - ensure you are building the hotels on higher ground in your yard... if you have a spot that floods when the snow first melts & that is the location of your little hotels, you will just have lost all those ladybugs to drowning 😖

If you have a coniferous tree, a few dry pine cones in your piles of leaves is also a good hiding spot for the ladybugs. In spring, as the snow melts & the sun warms, the ladybugs will wake up, and climb up into the warmth, then go back down into the hotel when the sun starts to set & it gets chilly again. I have a few large Greek Oregano clumps that are well-loved by several species of beneficial insects - ALL means & manner of bees constantly at work on the flowers, for as long as they are in flower (mason bees, 5-8 types of bumble bees, honey bees, leaf-cutter bees, and mason bees, and even a type of tiny little red-coloured bees that have a nest under my front step!) .... the stems & leaves, as they die off in fall will collect dead leaves as the autumn winds blow them around. I always throw a huge armload of dead leaves under my lilac, too. Day lilies make great places to tuck some dead leaves under the sagging foliage.

Since making my yard friendlier to the ladybugs, I have not had big issues with aphids, even though I have many plants that are aphid favourites, like yarrow. Aphids LOVE yarrow! So those are a fabulous place for a ladybug hotel. I'm often carrying the ladybugs over to those plants if they're crawling up & out of the grass in fall on the last mowing, or leaf sucking (the vibrations get the ladybugs moving)..... I can't stand the thought of just running them over & killing them! I usually try to hand rake a bit to get them going & put them in a paper Bag with some dead leaves, then redistribute them around the yard's hotels.

Well, that's the end of The Aphid Triad .. until there is new research, that is.

I hope you are all having a wonderful gardening season for 2023!
 

Part 2 of The Aphid Triad - Ants

This is where ants come in to play. Ants are incredibly smart.

Ants are the very bestest of best friends with aphids -- so if you see an ant carrying an aphid through your garden, it's not because it's been a successful hunt. It's because ants are little aphid ranchers. They will guard their aphid ranch on whatever plant they are on because aphids pee out the excess sugar from the plant sap they suck out of your plants (called "honeydew"), and they will kill ladybugs & ladybug larvae on their ranches. The ants will spend the entire season drinking up the sugary liquid, and take it back to the nest to feed to the larvae & other workers that don't leave the nest.

They are known to not only manage their aphid ranches, they will carry them to new food sources, knowing that the lone aphid will then start birthing more aphids, which means more honeydew for the ants.

Ants are also known to farm funguses -- way down in the deepest parts of the nest, they'll have "rooms" that are dedicated to feeding their fungus. They'll take fresh grass clippings to the farm, an some even have sharp mandibles that evolved for the ants to cut pieces of live leaves off. The ants are also great engineers -- the nests are vented to keep the fungus (and the queen, eggs & larvae) at the optimal temperature, with lots of airflow bringing oxygen in.

 Like I said, incredibly smart.

 

Stay tuned for Part 3: Ladybugs ...

The Aphid Triad - Part 1 Aphids

Do you have aphid issues in your garden? Everyone gets a few aphids, but if you grow certain plants that aphids love, you'll have A LOT of aphids!

This post is part 1 of a series that I'm going to call " The Aphid Triad", because there are three important steps in any aphid infestation.

It was the dead of winter 2017/2018 as I started typing this, but then I started school, and had a whirlwind of classes and my big exam, then getting ready for Level 2 exam, but instead getting a job and 2 months of intense training ... and the next thing I knew it's now Sept 22, 2018!  We've had about 6" of snow since Thursday night, YUCK! We had snow last week, too, and I lost EVERYTHING in my veggie garden, and will likely lose loads of perennials, too, because they're not ready for winter (GRR!).

I know there are no bugs right now, but I wanted to share some info about aphids now, because spring will be here soon enough. Aphids are pesky little buggers that try to kill off our crops. They have evolved into soooo many different colours & types. I've seen burgundy-red ones, black ones, green ones, and even yellow ones. They don't seem to care about camouflage, and although they are so tiny, they cause a lot of damage!

Aphids are weird little beasties -- they are all female, and they are all born pregnant. They give birth to little live clones, at an alarming rate.  They live birth their young, without the need to mate with a male, known as parthenogenesis.

The only time aphids mate & lay eggs is in later fall -- they die off at the end of the summer (in areas that get proper winter, like here), but they need to continue the species... so they'll then give birth to some males with wings that will fly around & mate with as many females as they can before they die. The mother aphids lay eggs on the plants that they know will grow in spring, so that their next generation hatches to a reliable food source.

Once those eggs hatch (many of those ones have wings, just in case the food source was an annual & not coming back), they go off in search of plants to eat.

Now, to give you an idea of exactly how well aphids can reproduce themselves ... I read an article recently in which an entomologist named Stephen A. Marshall (presumably in the USA) was quoted as saying that in an optimal season, a single aphid can produce about 600 BILLION descendants!

That's why your can have just a couple of aphids here & there & within a week have every single plant utterly covered in aphids.

A lot of garden websites & magazine say that dealing with aphids is simple, just knock them off with a stream of water ... well, I am going to argue that point.

Yes, they will get knocked off the plant if you put the hose on them, but they just walk to the nearest plant & start over. It doesn't help reduce their population! I experimented last summer, when my Yarrows were covered in aphids, to see how each "tip & trick" online works, and that particular tip didn't work in the long run -- it just resulted in more plants having aphids on them! (Ants will also help them out by carrying them to different plants, but I will get into that in Part 2) .

In order to get rid of aphids, they need to be killed. I never ever advise using any sort of insecticide spray, even "organic" ones, because they just kill ALL insects, even the good guys! Insecticidal soap doesn't discriminate, it will wipe out ladybugs, parasitic wasps, butterflies, you name it, it it hits them, or a bug lands on a plant still wet with soap, it will die. Same with Diatomaceous Earth -- it kills everyone, and we really don't want that!

So how to get just the aphids.... with my yarrow, I was able to carefully put a small sour cream tub under the flowers or infested sections and shake them off into the container. I accidentally got a few ladybug larvae, so I was able to scoop them out & put them back on the yarrow to continue feasting on the aphids.

The aphids in the bucket got a "bath" with water with a squirt of dish detergent in it so that they'd drown. I dump the bucket out under a spruce tree that's away from my flowerbeds, once the aphids are dead.

I had a few aphids on my sweet peas, not very many, but sweet peas are hard to shake off, so whenever I found a ladybug in the lawn I would move it onto the sweet peas, and that worked quite well. The sweet peas never got into "infested mode" because the ladybugs would eat the few that were there.

Another idea is to plant a bait plant, like yarrow, that will draw the aphids to them. Yarrow is highly scented, and aphids just flock to them. Then you can mainly work with the yarrow instead of other plants that aren't as hardy.

BBC included a section on aphids in their Micro-Monsters series presented by my favourite Natural History presenter, Sir David Attenborough. It was really interesting and really gave insight into the life cycle of these little insects that cause so much damage in such a short time. The video clip below is from Micro Monsters, but I'd  highly recommend looking up the entire thing on YouTube and watching the whole thing, it is so fascinating! And BBC always has technology for filming that nobody else has, for the most part. I don't want to go on & on too much, but it's definitely worth watching the whole thing!

Aphids can also decide on giving birth to babies with wings or without wings -- if the mother aphid feels that the plant is at it's threshold for food-source-to-population ratio, it will give birth to babies with wings so they can fly off to find a new food source. Otherwise they don't waste their energy & resources on bothering with wings.

In order to get a handle on controlling the aphids, you also need to understand the full issue of having aphids.....which I will go into a bit more in Part 2.

I'll leave off here for today, though -- I hope you're warm & dry on this crazy winter-like day. I desperately need to get outside & do some hazard control, because I had all kinds f things lined up to get done "before winter hit" not expecting it would hit in what was technically still summer!

 Did you have aphid issues this year? Did you know they just clone themselves? I'm curious if other people have issues or if they've noticed them crawling back up onto plants after knocking them off with the water hose!

See you in Part 2!

Hydrangeas for the Edmonton, Alberta Area

I have been IN LOVE with hydrangeas since I was a little girl... but up until the last 15-ish years there were no hydrangeas anywhere that I live. It was always a case of "they're not hardy here", and even though it turns out the PeeGee is hardy here, no greenhouses would touch hydrangeas with a 10 foot pole, so to speak... 

Well plant companies in the last few years have been working to breed hydrangeas that are hardy where I live --- YAY!

That said, I'll never ever get to have one of the big Mopheads. They're way too tender to have up here, so l never get to have a true blue hydrangea, or the ones like "Next Generation Pistachio" or "Next Generation Wedding Ring".  As much as I love them, the Proven Winners' Cityline line or the Let's Dance series will never grace this yard, sadly. (Typed out as I stare longingly at the picture of "Rio" on the PW website)

That said, though, there are some now that are hardy here -- and I am ecstatic to be able to have them!

I started with two hydrangeas, both part of the Proven Winners line I figured I couldn't go wrong with them, since their plants have always been excellent performers for me. I bought these two at full price, because I really wanted them. First up was the original Invincibelle Spirit (it was named for Breast Cancer Survivors & Warriors, PW donates $1 from the sale of each Invincibelle to breast cancer charity), and the Little Lime, which is an easier-to-handle miniature shrub that is excellent for smaller yards, or for flowerbeds.

The first Little Lime I bought didn't make it the first year. I suspect that I overfertilized it, but the Invincibelle has just thrived. Every year it puts on an amazing show! I planted it at the edge of the yard, across from my kitchen window so that I could see it every day.
 

Invincibelle Spirit from Proven Winners
The original Invincibelle Spirit Hydrangea is a super-hardy larger shrub, with huge panicles filled with little itty bitty blooms. Pictures below are of the huge flowerheads, and the different shades of pink they bloom. I love this shrub -- it can be pruned back to keep it rather small, or you can let it go crazy. I've only really pruned minimally -- I prune off the previous year's flowerheads in spring; I leave them on over the winter because I like having the winter interest. I also usually take out a few branches that look winter killed (it's pretty easy to have a few branches lost this far north), and just a bit here & there to keep it in a nice shape as opposed to wild-looking. 

I have my hand in the photos to give an idea of how big the blooms are.

This is the whole shrub, in July 2016. I had pruned it a bit harder that year. If you prefer it 

to only have enormous panicles, you can snip off all the little ones.

Same shrub, a few weeks later

When it comes to pruning the Invincibelle, you really can't prune them wrong. They flower on new wood, which ensures that you can't mess up & have no blooms that year.  You can prune out whatever you want to or need to. I'll do another post in the future about pruning them -- probably next spring when I have a chance to prune all of them.

The only word of warning I have for these is that the flower heads get very heavy when it's raining a lot, and they tend to really droop once they're sopping wet. 

I put a peony ring around the Invincibelle a few years ago, but I need a much bigger one if I am going to leave the shrub the size it is now at. We had a 2-day storm in July of 2017 that really bent a lot of the branches down, despite me going out every few hours to shake them off a bit. Overall, though, it wasn't any worse for wear after the 2 days of rain & driving winds. I'll probably prune it a little heavier in spring 2018 but that's about it.

Proven Winners has since discontinues this Invincibelle, and released a new & improved one, called, of course, Invincibelle Spirit II which sounds utterly amazing -- its blooms start out pink and mature to green. That would be interesting! It also mentions that the stems are thicker & stronger, which is a very good thing, because I do find that if there is a long rainstorm the blooms tend to sag & droop once they're saturated. I might just have to keep an eye out for that one next year.

I added a few more hydrangeas to my yard last year (2016), thanks to end of season clearance sales at our local big-box stores' pop-up garden centres... many more hydrangeas than I originally planned to buy! Whoops. I just couldn't leave them there.... I had visions of them getting chucked in a dumpster, or bought by someone who wouldn't give them the extra care and attention they so desperately needed & they'd die anyway.

So I bought them.

Endless Summer

I have always wished I could have one of those blue-in-acid-soil / pink in alkaline soil giant mophead hydrangeas, but they would never survive here...  but along came Endless Summer. Touted as the hardy blue hydrangea, I was quite excited to finally have one.

The Endless Summer  is a blue or pink-blooming shrub, depending on soil acidity. It blooms on both old wood & new wood, which was supposed to bypass the biggest issue in northern gardens with hydrangeas, that late frosts that kill the bloom buds on hydrangeas that bloom on old wood (those ones are like lilacs, they grow the buds the previous fall). The Endless Summer was also supposed to bloom all summer long, as it grew new branches, and which was supposed to be* hardy here.

(*notice I'm saying "supposed to" an awful lot in this section?? Yeah. That's because it's NOT hardy here).

It was quite happy when I first planted it, it grew a couple of big flowerheads, and leafed out ... well, it was happy until winter hit. It hadn't even shed its leaves, so they hung there, looking just like frozen lettuce looks. 

I dug it out & took it back in summer 2017, based on the 1-year warranty that Canadian Tire offers on their shrubs. They gave me a full refund on it, which was awesome, and a very good reason to buy shrubs there!

Later in the summer, I was reading an old copy of a Canadian garden magazine (I collect Gardens West, wherever I see them, it's still the BEST Canadian gardening magazine that ever was) and just happened upon an article on hardy hydrangeas for the Canadian Prairies -- and they flat-out state that Endless Summer should only be treated as an annual on the prairies of Canada OR kept in a container & brought inside.

GRR. 

In the time since, I posted on a local gardening group on Facebook and several others replied that theirs didn't make it through the winter either, so I don't feel as bad. Lesson learned, I guess. 

Just today, while researching for this entry, I stumbled on a Southern Gardening magazine article, and in it, the Alabama gardener (known as The Grumpy Gardener) that wrote it said that many "northern" gardeners (in the USA, hence the quotes -- those folks have no idea what a true "Northern Garden" is!) were thrilled with theirs. Which is great, but they are so much further south than I am, I don't think they get quite as cold in winter as we do here!

So remember -- NO ENDLESS SUMMER in Alberta. 

Probably not in Saskatchewan or Manitoba either. Unless maybe you treat it the way you'd treat a tender rose?

However, on to bigger & better things.... I'm thrilled with the other ones I got. Note that if it's underlined, it's a link to the website of whatever company grows them, so you can get all the info regarding growth habit & hardiness for your own garden.

Quick Fire
This is another true winner, put out by Proven Winners. I love this one. (Who am I kidding? I love them all!)

This one has bloom heads that only some of the flowers open wide, so it's very lacey. It starts out white, then the blooms start to turn a dusty rose pink as they mature, then a darker dusty rose pink.

It's gorgeous.

It really brightens up the area I planted it -- it faces west so is in complete shade until the sun comes around from the south side of my house. I was surprised at how much lighter the whole entire bed seemed when the blooms were white!

I have not pruned this one very much yet -- just took off last year's blooms once the leaf buds started swelling. I bought it at Canadian Tire at the very start of the clearance specials -- I didn't want to risk not being able to get it for another year, so the minute the $70 shrubs went on half price, I begged a friend to take me there to buy it. I think $35 was a great deal for it.

I should also note -- the Quick Fire did better than I would have expected, considering I moved it in spring 2017 (I originally had it planted about 20 feet away from this location, but the bed looked totally lopsided). It didn't suffer at all from transplant shock, although I made sure to dig around it quite widely so as not to cut roots off, but still... not a problem for it. 

I am so happy with this shrub! I put it where it is, because I wanted to kinda cover up the huge god-awful gas meter that the gas company put in a couple of years ago (and completely ruined the soil in this bed -- but that's a whole 'nother post!)

The only thing I don't love about this shrub is that it doesn't attract bees...instead, it attracts paper wasps and flies.  When the blooms were white, there was always at least 2 huge black & white wasps poking around the little flowers (they weren't interested in the big lacey ones, just the tiny buds). It made it quite difficult for me to get in that area to plant anything, or dig out the day lily that was behind it, or do any weeding. It all worked out in the end, but just exercise caution if you plant this -- there will be big black & white wasps coming to visit.

It's kind-of like light is shining out of every single bloom. 

It has really brightened this area of my yard!

 So, you can see how small it started out, and this area is in shade until at least 3 or 4pm daily.

 I have since removed the day lily from behind it, and the Heucheras (aka "Coral Bells", but unless they have coral flowers, I call them Heuchera) have gotten bigger, as have the dwarf irises around it. I added in a ton of tulips & daffodils this fall, I can't wait for them to start popping up!

The blooms are such a bright white that the camera kind-of had a hard time focusing on them,
because they were so bright. I really didn't expect that having white flowers in here 
would brighten it up so much . I really like the effect.

  Quick Fire in mid-summer, once it started turning pink

This is what the blooms look like closer up once they've really changed colour.
This is about as dark as it got. Just gorgeous!

As I'm snooping around the Proven Winners website, I noticed that they now have a miniature version of the Quick Fire as well -- aptly named "Little Quick Fire". It would be perfect for the small yards in newer housing developments!

Little Lime 
This one replaces the one I killed off years ago. I am pretty sure I killed it with kindness, so the saying goes -- I had read somewhere that hydrangeas are extremely heavy feeders, but it turns out, they don't actually need a ton of fertilizer to grow those blooms. Which is a good thing, but you need to know that before you plant one.

I bought this one on a whim -- extreme clearance sale. It was really broken and in desperate need of some water, but for $8 from $40 I just HAD TO. I gave it a good haircut,  dribbled water in/on the broken parts  then used velcro plant tape to reattach them (basically DIY grafted them back together), splinted a couple of them, and made slings to ensure they stayed at the right angles to stitch back together ... 
It worked! It's a beautiful little shrub this year. I was just thrilled to see how many blooms it grew, because really, it shouldn't have healed that well, that fast (and bear in mind it healed up over a very harsh winter -- winter 2016 was NOT a fun winter for us here, it was super-cold, and we had a lot of snow!)

 

You can see it stating to turn pink. 

There are some newer, smaller blooms in the centre of the top, and to 

the bottom left side of the photo, those blooms are still straight green. All the bloom heads

 start out that shade of green, then get the pink tinge as they mature.

I LOVE this little shrub! I love the way it looks like each little bloom has 

a tiny pearl bead in the centre.

 I'm considering getting a full-size Limelight for my side yard. 

Or maybe a Pinky Winky?

Proven Winners has certainly lived up to their name!

 Now, bear in mind that most of those branches were put back together and held
in place with velcro tape! The smaller branches are the only ones that weren't put back together.
I'm beyond amazed that they took to begin with let alone bloomed!
It's only a foot tall for the most part -- the part at the upper right corner is about 2 feet tall.

Another shot of one of the bloom heads. One of these days I'll have to send

 these pictures to Proven Winners. It's just gorgeous!

The Little Lime is so beautiful that I really want to get the full-sized version, called Limelight
I can just imagine it being 5 feet tall and loaded up with those green blooms! Just gorgeous. I have to admit I wasn't too sure about having a shrub with green blooms, but they are just breathtakingly beautiful.

Up Next ... My Mystery Hydrangea -- possibly Fire & Ice

This one didn't have any tags, so it was a total mystery. All I knew is that it was in a Bloomin' Easy brand pot, that it was a hydrangea of some sort (because it had a dead branch with a brown/dead & dry bloom), and that it was on clearance for $10 from $60. 

Again, I just had to. You have to, when something so great is on such rock-bottom pricing.

Okay, I have to.  Y'all can pay full price if you want to, but I would rather not. And I have a thing about rescuing half-dead plants.

When it started growing this last spring, the new wood was bright but deep red. I emailed Bloomin' Easy to see if they could tell me what it was ... they think it's one called Fire & Ice. They said that they have discontinued many of the varieties that they didn't create genetically, so they could focus on creating their own varieties only. 

I found other websites that do sell it, though, such as Monrovia.

Looking at all these websites showing pictures of this one, I'm not entirely convinced it is a Fire & Ice -- it definitely did NOT turn red in fall. Hrmm.... I don't know. All I do know is that I love hydrangeas. They just didn't exist up here until the last 10 or 15 years; now every garden centre has all the hardy ones (and several that are not hardy, which always bugs me that they do that -- another blog post though!)

The blooms are conical, and have opened white & are turning green (or maybe it's green & turning white?) ... either way it's gorgeous!Later in the summer they started to turn pink, too!

Whatever it is, it's pretty! I'm also amazed this one bloomed -- I truly thought they would need a few years to get back to full health before having the strength to bloom. You can see the colour of the blooms as they start at the bottom of this panicle & at the top it's starting to turn pink.

 The entire shrub. I'm going to have to move the poor thing, it's tucked a bit too close in
this corner, but I wasn't expecting it to grow huge. Whoops.  I will have to find a better
 home for it, or maybe just scoot it over a foot or so.

 One odd thing about this one, is that  most of the flowers look like a regular hydrangea with
conical or balloon-shaped panicles... but tucked into the middle were a couple of little
flower heads that want to be Quick Fires.
It's so weird, because I didn't do any grafting back on with this one, nor did I need to with
the Quick Fire, so I couldn't have accidentally gotten some branches mixed up.
I only trimmed the dead parts off. Weird. Beautiful, but weird.

See what I mean? Completely different flower habit. If it means anything, the branches that flowered weird were the ones that were the bright red wood.

 Well, that's it for my hydrangeas ... so far, muahahahaha... do you have hydrangeas? What area are you in & what types do you have? I'd love to hear other people's experiences with these amazing shrubs!

Are you confused about hydrangeas? Proven Winners has a page full of info on their website, called "Hydrangeas Demystified" -- please go check it -- and the rest of their fabulous website-- out!

**NOTE: Proven Winners is NOT a sponsor of my blog. I get nothing from them for talking about their shrubs, and I have paid for each & every one of my shrubs from them. I'm just sharing my experience with their products, and my opinions about them, which, so far, have all been good!

SLUGS Are Assholes, Too

Now that we had all that rain, it's provided the moisture & damp shady spots for slug eggs to hatch, so it's good idea to head out at sun-down if you can to do a sweep of your plants to remove any slugs. It's definitely worth your while to go out with a flashlight, the slime trails reflect & shimmer when the light hits them, so it can give you an idea where they're coming from or heading out to

If you have any of those black compost bins, they live & lay lots of eggs in those -- they'll start coming out once it's dark. They often come up & hang around the top for a while to see what's new there, then they'll start coming out the vents to go gnaw on your plants. 

They LOVE pea plants! And lettuces -- ALL types of lettuce, but especially romaine for some reason.

From there, they'll eat beans, tomatoes (both the plants and the fruit), strawberries, corn plants & cucumber plants, and probably start in on any forming cukes, etc too ... one of them a few days ago was munching on one of my pea plants and had almost chewed right through the stem!
Asshole.

In the flowerbeds they LOVE to hide in day lily leaves, right in the main clumps where the leaves join together (it's basically like a high-rise apartment complex) & they'll start heading out at dark.

They also LOVE Oriental poppy plants -- which shocks me because they're so darned prickly, but there they are ... I've now gotten forty-five of them in the last 5 days just in the one clump of poppies This was a bed with lots of poppies that netted me 450 in one day last year! (No, that is not a typo.) Last week, I was watering the areas that had already dried out, and came back to the poppies, thinking, "maybe I should check real quick before I head inside" ... and they were everywhere! AND I had already sorted through the leaves & picked out 4 or 5! But between probably being waterlogged, since I'd dumped a bucket of water on the poppy clump, and it being sun-down, they all came out to play.

Assholes.

They have utterly shredded several of my smaller gladiolas, and they're leaving their chew marks on irises as well. They also love hollyhocks, all parts -- and they're experts at using last year's stem stump to hide in, so check those, too! Same with bleeding heart stem stumps, whether from last year or if some break due to wind or rain, the manage to find them, too.

They're not adverse to eating rhubarb or horseradish either. And of course hostas ... they LOVE hostas, both for food and like with the day lilies, hiding where the leaves meet the main clumps or underneath the low-lying leaves.

So far, they've all been quite small, probably only a few weeks old. I have been unable to find any slugs anywhere near the shredded gladiolas, I did finally find one baby last night in one of my trap/hiding spots, but that's been it, so I'm kinda boggled on that one.

We've had several more rainy & humid few days since I started typing this, and it's been at least 100 slugs daily when I do my nightly walk around my yard. (ick).

To make it easier to find them during the day I'll turn over a few of those solid seedling trays on bare dirt (giving the soil a good soak first so it's nice & moist & shady), or I'll fold up a few sheets of newspaper, dampen them & place them in areas prone to slug damage, then just unfold the paper to check during the day. Plastic coffee can lids work, as do black plastic garbage bags crumpled up and sprayed a bit so there is moisture through the layers.

Some people have great success with beer traps, but I have literally watched slugs crawl in, get drunk & crawl out & go on their merry way, lol, so to me it seems like a waste of perfectly good beer! I also tried the non-toxic Slug-B-Gone pellets, but they just would not eat them, so the pellets just went moldy.

I hand-pick them & drop them in my drowning bucket. I'm all for various critters that eat slugs coming & eating them, but in all my 40-some years I have never seen a garter snake in this area (I grew up less than a mile from where I now live), nor have I ever seen frogs or toads hopping through here, and the crows & magpies scared all the smaller birds away, so it's up to me to protect my food & flowers!

Oh, and the other things slugs love?
Lawn edging.
There is usually a bit of space between the lawn & the edging itself, so they just slip down in there in the morning -- it's a pretty safe bet for them, because who is going to be able to look down there during the day? Well, dribble some water down there just as it's getting dark, and give it a few minutes... they'll start slithering up & out.

I shudder to think of how many slugs I would have right now if I hadn't done a thorough search of  my yard quite late last fall. I was outside planting lots of spring bulbs anyway, and trying to cram in as much outside time before the long cold winter set in, doing things like last-minute lawn edging & replacing the edging itself, placing rocks along a new flowerbed, amending soil in the new flowerbed, dumping rain barrels & flipping them over for the winter, etc. I found tons down the lawn edging, they'd created little dens for themselves to over-winter in, kinda beside the edging, in the soil, if that makes sense, there was some under rain barrels, a few under some railroad/landscaping ties, and of course, LOTS in my compost bins! I made a point of  emptying them entirely & setting them up in a different spot of the garden and wow did I find a lot of big slugs in those, and loads of clumps of slug eggs, too. I suspect that, had I not done that, I would be having a similar issue to when I hunted (and found) the 450 in one little (10' x 5') flowerbed that had big hollyhocks & loads of Oriental poppies, day lily, and bulb lilies.

THAT wouldn't have been good. Not at all!

To kill them ...
I am NOT a "squisher". Some people love to squish caterpillars & slugs with their shoes or hands, but I. just. can't.
I'm a "drowner".
I drown various pests in a plastic container (usually a sour cream or yogurt container) with a squirt of dish soap mixed in. It makes it so that insects don't float, therefore can't swim, slugs can't get a grip on the side of the container & crawl out, and neither can caterpillars or aphids.

Then I dump out the container underneath on of my huge spruce trees  rinse it out. Do this daily or it will STINK. I missed dumping one last summer and it sat in the sun all day, and OMG I gagged just trying to carry it out & away!
NEVER again.
I tried diatomaceous earth (DE) a few years ago, but it got expensive because I had to reapply every time it rained, and it was a rainy summer! One of these days maybe I'll grab a big tub of it from a farm supply store, but for right now I'd rather not spend the money on it.

Are you having slug issues after all this rain? Where do they hide in your yard? Do you have good luck with beer traps? Or have you found a product that actually works on them?I've tried them all, but always just go back to hand picking.

Black Knot.... also known as "Cat Crap on a Stick"

It's not quite spring here yet, but it's coming. It's now full-on daytime when I leave to go to school in the mornings -- when I started back in early January, it was pitch-dark when I left home at 7:55am to catch my bus!
Now, though, the sun has been up for a half-hour or so before I have to leave. For those of us this far north, it's putting a spring in our step to have the increased daylight hours, because it's really hard on all of us in wintertime to leave for work in the morning in pitch blackness at 8am, and return home at 4:30 and it's almost dark already. Having sunshine for more of our waking hours makes such a nice difference! It's no longer the dead of winter! YAY!

With spring almost here, it's time to do a bit of housekeeping in our yards. It's the perfect time of year to have a walk around the yard to inspect trees & shrubs, while they're still bald. It makes it a lot easier to see the branches -- which leads to what I'm going to talk about....

The dreaded Black Knot.

Also known as Cat Crap on a Stick -- because that's exactly what it looks like.

Black Knot affects the following trees or shrubs -- if you have any of them, be on the lookout now, before they start to leaf out. It's better, also to get those pruners out & snip the infected branches off, before the sap starts flowing in spring.

• Flowering Almond
• Mayday
• Wild Plum
• Apricot
• Flowering Plum
• Mongolian Cherry
• Japanese Plum
• Nanking Cherry
• Korean Cherry
• Choke Cherry
• Sour Cherry
• Pin Cherry
• Prunus hybrids

Below is a link to the County of Strathcona's website with information on how to deal with Black Knot, as well as some phone numbers to call if you spot a diseased tree anywhere in the County. I was informed today that the City of Edmonton doesn't seem to take time to get out there & talk to residents who have infected trees, so I wanted to make a post so that people who have infected trees in neighbouring yards can maybe open a conversation with the owners about their tree, and that this disease WILL kill it.

This page on the County of Strathcona website has some great info, as well as phone numbers you can call if you need more info or if you have tried & tried to educate neighbours on how they need to manage it and you're being ignored, they will go out to talk to the people & be a bit pushier about getting a handle on it.
https://www.strathcona.ca/agriculture-environment/plants/tree-care/black-knot/

If you have a tree with black knot, you will need some good, sharp pruners. If some of the branches are waaaayyyyy up, you'll need telescoping pruners. You'll also need a bucket large enough to dip the blades of the pruners into it after each & every cut you make, to prevent spreading the spores into uninfected areas. Pour some water & bleach -- 75% water & 25% bleach; measure both if you have to, in order to ensure that there is enough bleach to kill spores on the blades. If there isn't enough bleach in the water, it won't do anything to the sprores and you'll just be spreading them around, which you don't want!

If you don't have any pruners right now, Dollarama usually stocks some decent ones for only about $3. No matter what pruners you have, be sure that you dry the blades & the hinge completely before you put them away! It's also a good idea to oil the hinge as well, because the bleaching & cleaning will probably remove the hinge oil, so the hinge will get stiff & difficult to open or close them. If you take care of your pruners, they will last a long time.

When you're done trimming off the affected branches, use your pruners to chop them small enough to fit in a black garbage bag. Seal the bag and place it in your black garbage bin for pickup. I always attach a note to the bag itself, stating "Black Knot infected branches - MUST go to landfill" because my municipality has a waste management system that requires organic matter to go into a green bin for composting, BUT black knot survives the composting process, and will just spread the disease further if the compost stream is contaminated with Black Knot spores. DO NOT compost any part of the tree, including leaves, in your own compost bin! Get rid of them & be sure that your pruners are sterilized & fully dry before you put them away.

I hope that this post is helpful to those of you with Mayday trees or plums or cherries. I haven't got any of them in my own yard, because a neighbour's Mayday tree is terribly infected with Black Knot & it overhangs into my yard. I prune off whatever infected parts I can reach, but it's a losing battle, unfortunately.

If you have any tips or tricks to deal with this disease, I'd love to hear it so I can' add it to this post.  If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help out.

See you in the next post!

Growing Sweet Corn in the Edmonton, Alberta Area

I have to dispel the myths about growing corn in colder climates -- because there are new varieties that wipe out all the rules about growing corn in Northern/Central Alberta!

The trick to sweet corn in Northern Alberta is NEVER buy corn seeds just "off the rack" in whatever store... "Early Canada" varieties refer to being early ...in Toronto.
Which is NOT early for here!

We have a much shorter growing season here than they have there!

The Early Canada off the rack seeds require VERY warm soil in order to sprout, and by the time our soil here warms to the right temperature, it's barely the nick-of-time for sowing those kinds that will give them enough time to grow & ripen decent ears of corn.You have to be able to trust planting super-early (mid-April, IF the snow is gone yet) for our area, since the May Long Weekend is usually the cut-off -- corn seedlings will not survive a hard frost, and since it won't sprout in cooler soil ... well it's the main reasons for people thinking they "have no luck with corn".

So, right off the starting line, germination can be VERY spotty with the pop-up garden centre or grocery store seed-rack corn seeds. Even if daytime temps are really warm & the soil seems warm, if the nights are cool, then the soil will chill considerably. PLUS the sun's rays aren't that strong yet, and the back & forths just make the seeds rot (even treated ones will rot in those conditions) or stalls the seedlings. And, even if the corn seems to be going well, sprouted & a few inches tall, a cold spell or late frost or even a late blizzard (as we tend to get here sometimes) can severely stunt it, and it takes time to catch up again, IF it ever does.

So, that is a huge part of what makes growing corn so difficult, because you cannot really plant those seeds in April, without taking a huge risk -- UNLESS it's an El Nino winter, like last year, and spring is in full swing by early March.... and even then, it's still a gigantic risk, because they are very sensitive to frost on the other end of the cycle... fall. And whenever we have an El Nino winter, it's extremely mild, often not a lot of snow, then there is an early spring, and a gorgeous summer, with plants kinda going crazy because of having so much more time at the start of their growing cycle... but what always seems to happen on the other end of an EL Nino is an early fall with harder frosts coming much earlier... then a very hard winter the year after El Nino. This past winter was the perfect example of how harsh of a winter we get the year after EL Nino (lots of -30Cs, lots of snow, and we tend to lose more perennials, bulbs, trees & shrubs to winter-kill because they can't hack the cold after being used to be so warm!)

The last time I planted a regular SE/SU Early Canada kind of corn, it was an early spring, and summer went well, it was growing and forming ears.... then we had a severe frost on Sept 6 -- so I lost EVERYTHING
And since corn requires A LOT of space and fertilizing (&/or soil amending) and time, it just wasted so many of my resources*.
*Hours of checking each stalk for pests, watering every second or third day through our usually very dry summers, weeding, obtaining grass clippings to mulch the corn bed, fertilizing once per week, not to mention the space it takes to grow corn -- well over half of my 50' x 20' garden space.

I almost cried.

A few years ago I started requesting seed catalogues from a few companies, one of which was Vesey's Seeds in PEI. And they all have a lot of interesting things that regular stores do not have.

Which is where I first heard of Synergistic corn... I did a lot of reading on the various new Synergistic corn varieties... there are several that are "specialists" for sprouting in colder soil, AND they are much earlier than SU or SE varieties... PLUS, another added bonus, is that they remain sweet on the stalk (OR once picked!) A LOT longer than the SE/SUs... so you can pick a cob here & there, you're not waiting on pins & needles for harvest day & having to drop everything because the corn's ready.

I ordered one of the SY's called Espresso Synergistic Bi-Colour Corn, because one of the things the catalogue said was "great cold soil vigour".

I got a package of 200 seeds 3 years ago -- what struck me first was that I got 100% germination on them -- utterly unheardof in "Early Canada" & other SE/SU varieties (one of the "rules" of growing corn was always "start with brand-new seed every year").... so I was royally impressed right off the hop. Of course, having experience only in the Early Canadas before that, I over-sowed, expecting only half of them to sprout. Who knew?

When it was ready I picked the biggest cobs, and they were so sweet that we were nibbling cobs raw. I stored the picked cobs in my fridge and they were just as sweet a week later as they were the day I picked them! Which is also unheardof in regular SE/SU varieties -- with those kinds, once you pick it, it starts to degrade rapidly, it has to be eaten or frozen or canned within 2 days MAX. By three days post-harvest, with regular sweet corn, it's already getting mealy & bitter (or at the very least, not sweet).

I got the most amazing harvest that year! I was sold on Synergistics! The cobs were beautiful. Espresso is a bi-colour corn just packed with sweet corn flavour, not a mealy kernel to be found!

Last year, I messed up... it was too dry at first to till my garden & prep the corn bed, then too wet. By the time I was able to prep it properly it was already the end of May, and by the time I got the seeds in the ground it was June 5... and I double-sowed again because one thing corn is famous for is having terrible germination rates on everything but the absolute freshest of seeds... 

Umm, yeah, every single one sprouted. 

So I had to quickly dig up & carefully separate them & replant. Which probably also set them back, because corn doesn't take well to having any root disturbance, but they sure weren't going to do well so close together, and I really didn't want to just cut one of every 2 off at soil level, I have a very difficult time killing something I've nurtured & grown. So dig & transplant it was.

The corn did beautifully, but I planted too late -- totally my own fault! By the time we were starting to get frosts most of it just wasn't quite ready. I got a few really good cobs off it, but it was a learning the hard way lesson that you just can't wait to sow with ANY corn. It needs to be in the ground early enough.

This year I had 41 seeds left, and the same too wet/too dry thing was going on, so I sowed in peat pots with potting soil... and even with 3-year-old seeds, every single one sprouted! I ended up losing 2 to cutworms (the little bugger crawled right up the side of the plastic bin I had the peat pots in, and up the sides of the peat pots! JERK.). I didn't have the bins indoors or under light or anything like that, I just set them in a warm sunny spot in my back yard. And when I went to plant them, I was THRILLED with all the good strong roots coming out the sides & bottom of the peat pots! That's big. And there was NO transplant shock at all, despite those roots that were sticking out getting somewhat disturbed being put in the ground. I put a plastic cup around the seedlings as I planted them int he ground, because cutworms were AWFUL again this year -- people in local groups losing everything, plus I had already lost 2 corn seedlings, a gladiola, a specialty dwarf iris I'd just divided, a day lily baby, 2 muscari (and a clematis last fall) -- wasn't willing to lose more!

I will never EVER again plant anything other than a synergistic variety that says "cold soil vigour" in the blurb! And I will probably order from Vesey's again, because I know their seed is extremely fresh, whereas I don't know for sure about seed from other companies.  

Three Sisters ... Another thing to note about growing corn here ... the wind. A storm moved in here early yesterday evening, and it brought rain, high winds, and COLD air. Corn is VERY shallow-rooted, and part of the reason the Native Americans planted beans around the corn is not only because beans are a legume that pulls nitrogen from t he air & puts it in the soil (thus feeding the corn) it also is more deeply rooted, and helps anchor the corn stalks on windy days.
I have really bad luck with most beans -- I spent $$ last year on beautiful unusual beans, like Purple Peacock (I don't eat beans but I think there are several varieties that are too gorgeous to pass up), and not one ever sprouted. I had gotten others and they didn't grow either. (NONE of which were from Vesey's! They were all off the rack, however the rack was in a local pricey greenhouse).

I'm not sure why they didn't sprout or grow -- it is possible cutworms got them before they popped through the soil surface, since I know plenty of people that thought their seeds didn't sprout, then dug around & found some very fat cutworms and sprouts that were cut off below ground. 

I had saved Scarlet Runner beans a few years ago, and I really should have planted them with the corn, but I was taking too much time getting the bed tilled & amendments in & holes dug, and by the time I was done that I needed to get other stuff planted. I planted them last year in the corn, but since the corn was planted late, so were the beans & I didn't get any seeds from them (they froze solid before they were mature enough, whoops).

Lesson learned: plant the damn scarlet runner beans.

Looking out the window at the corn right now ... I'm probably going to have to go back out in the rain & wind & pile up some soil around the base of each corn stalk (I was already outside for an hour, bailing out overflowing rain barrels & putting the water on the lawn). It's VERY cold, and VERY windy right now, and I don't want to lose it all to this wind!

Anyway.... I really would love for everyone else to have the WONDERFUL corn-growing experience that I've had with the Synergistic corn and wonderful experience I've had with all of the Vesey's Seeds items I ordered!! (I got several types of seeds, as well as a Jump-Start 4' grow-light system that I adore, and spare bulbs once mine burned out.)

PLEASE NOTE: My blog isn't sponsored by Vesey's Seeds, I receive nothing from them for this post, I just simply love the company and their products and hope others would, too.          

You can request a free catalogue from Vesey's Seeds here --  https://www.veseys.com/ca/en/catalogue
Vesey's also has a separate website for USA customers -- https://www.veseys.com/us/en/

When you request a catalogue, you will get your seed catalogue in January (-ish), plus they send out Spring Bulb catalogues (usually they send one every second month or so for spring), then they send out the Fall Bubs catalogues starting in June-ish, and you often get more than one of that one too. I think they expect that people will loan them out & never get them back, haha. Their prices are really good, especially compared to other mail-order bulb companies and especially because they always run a special offer on the bulb catalogues of free shipping for orders over $25 OR $50 off purchase of $150* (33% off) OR $100 off purchase over $250* (a savings of 40%). It puts the price per bulb or perennial really reasonable! And if you're like me & you don't drive, having them come right to your door is awesome!

Updated in Fall 2017 to show more pictures of the 2017 corn....

A huge wind & rainstorm knocked most of the corn over in late July ... I had to go out to carefully prop them back upright again &  pile dirt (mud) all around the stalks. It was kinda fascinating how, within a week, the corn stalks started growing finger-like roots right at the soil line! I always knew corn was shallow-rooted, but I didn't know that they insisted on being shallow-rooted!

 Another shot of the new roots

  Aaannnnddd another shot of the new roots.

Weird, huh?

 The corn really likes the heat in my garden -- the garden faces south, and the sun & heat gets reflected from the stucco of my house. There is no shade in this garden after 8am for most of the summer. When it's 25C it will be at least 35C in this garden! I usually have to wait till later in the day to work in here, or get out there before  9am, before it heats up in here.

Summer 2017 has been extremely dry (no rain of any consequence since July 24/25), and while corn always attracts aphids, hot & dry weather makes for billions of aphids, ugh. This is the underside of one of the leaves on the corn stalks. I don't use pesticides in my garden for the most part, I usually hand-pick, but I left the aphids alone so the ladybugs would have their food source.

This is the underside of a leaf that had a huge wrinkle in the middle. Thankfully, the ladybugs that I so carefully gave winter accommodations to also had a population explosion. I'm not positive, but I think the little white wormy things are newborn ladybug larvae. Isn't it just disgusting, all those aphids???

 This is a more mature ladybug larvae. I had never before seen ladybug larvae, but once I saw one, I saw them everywhere! They have absolutely voracious appetites for aphids, eating their own weight every day.  They were all over the leaves, and especially a lot of them between the layers of husks, and many were right in the silks. I had to be really careful harvesting the corn that I didn't squish any! I made sure to drop  the babies on other parts of the corn plants so they could continue eating & growing. I think they are so beautiful!

As I was harvesting corn, I was finding huge clusters of ladybugs huddling together to stay warm overnight. I'm just thrilled to find so many! I moved them to other parts of the corn stalks and some to other areas with aphid issues (yarrow for instance, were just covered in aphids, ugh!)

As I was peeling outer husks of the corn, I found a ladybug that was so young it hadn't developed its spots yet! So cute, and a rare sight indeed!

So, one thing's for sure ... I'm getting Synergistic again. And planting beans with them next year! Anyone reading this ... what's your favourite corn? Do you plant the Three Sisters? When do you sow? I'd love to hear from you :)