If you followed my advice for using systemic rose care for your shrub roses when I first wrote about it this year, the product should be reapplied three times per season at six-week intervals, and this is six weeks after that initial application, so give them another treatment. Most roses are at their most vigorous growth period right now, so they will reward you later with more and bigger blooms. This also the time when the chewing and sucking insects attack them so the insecticide protection is a step ahead of the critters … that’s always a good maneuver!
I saw Colorado potato bugs on my potato plants already and this just seems too early to be battling them, but there they are, just feasting. Eight, an insecticide under the Bayer brand, is labeled for control of many vegetable pests and is really effective. If you have just a few potato plants, pick the beetles by hand and drop in a dish of soapy water. These bugs reproduce fast and can defoliate a plant in short order. Significant leaf loss really shows up in decreased yield at harvest so protection is important.
As the early blooming spring bulbs finish their display, be sure to cut the seed pods off before the plant pumps a lot of energy into seed production. We want that energy going into the bulb instead. And then, also remember to allow the foliage to yellow before cutting it off. That foliage is building next year’s flower in the bulb right now so removing it before it dies down naturally is basically removing next year’s flowers.
Lilacs are finished blooming, so get any pruning you have to do done now. Remember that if you are pruning to control size, cut them back far enough to give them room to grow. It doesn’t work to cut them to the size you want them to be.
Weigelas, mock orange, and bridal wreath spireas are next on the list in about two weeks. With these three, it’s important to remove the old “branchy” stems and allow the new straight stems to replace that old growth. That is called renewal pruning and makes maintaining the shrub much easier.