It seems that my sprayer has been in my hand for most of the summer. Wet is good to a certain extent and then it becomes an ongoing invitation to blight and fungus infections that are hard to control, and that is where I am right now … so the battle continues.
I am seeing a lot of the lower leaves of fall-blooming purple dome asters turning yellow and dry. Most often this is the symptom of damage from chrysanthemum lace bug.
This critter is a really small opaque-colored insect that sucks the sap out of the leaf starting at the bottom and moving upward as the foliage dies where it is feeding. Their feeding may not kill the plant, but as the damage progresses, the beauty of the plant is destroyed.
The insecticide “Eight” will control this pest, but it has to be sprayed on the undersides of the leaves because that is where the insect lives and feeds.
Daylilies are finishing their initial bloom season. If you get those stems with the seedpods cut out now, it will encourage a repeat color show later in the season for the reblooming varieties.
The first flowers of my new Summerific Cherry Choco Latte hardy hibiscus opened last week, and they are spectacular! Hardy hibiscus have been around for years but have not had a long bloom time, and in our hardiness Zone 4, there have not been many choices. The new varieties from Proven Winners remedy that problem. I ordered mine from a mail order company because there are not a lot of garden centers offering them yet.
Hibiscus die down to the ground in the winter and are late to begin growing the next season, but when they appear, they grow rapidly. These new varieties get 3 to 4 feet tall and about 5 feet wide and bloom from midsummer to frost with a flower that measures 10 inches across. That is a flower you notice from a distance!
Japanese beetles are a new pest to us. We’ve been told they are coming, and they have fulfilled that prophecy. I noticed a picture in the photography exhibit at the fair last week that captured a Japanese beetle sitting on a beautiful purple coneflower. The color of this new pest is metallic black and green.
It has a long list of plants on its appetizer list, and roses are one of its top choices. So far, the population is small but that will soon change.
Their life cycle goes from an adult that lays eggs on the ground to a larva that feeds on grass roots as a grub that pupates in the soil until it reemerges as an adult the next season.
On linden trees, another favorite of theirs, they literally skeletonize the leaf, leaving just the veins, so from a distance the tree looks brown. I’m waiting for a pest that will eliminate the pest … but then we will have another pest!