We have had wonderful moisture for our flower and vegetable gardens and our season is about two weeks early.
If you have hostas, I’m suggesting that you be on the lookout for slugs. These slimy critters eat irregular-shaped holes in the leaves, and if you don’t attack them early on, you will have those “holy” leaves to look at for the rest of the season. Slug baits are very effective as a preventative measure. Some varieties of hostas have thicker leaves than others, and the slugs seem to prefer the more delicate thin-leafed type.
Weigelas have put on an amazing color show this year and like lilacs, you need to prune them right after they finish blooming. Always remove the oldest branches to encourage new growth, and cut them back far enough to allow room for them to grow ... cutting back to the size you want them to be will not give them that option.
Mock orange will be the next shrub to bloom, and that will require the same pruning. With any of these shrubs, pruning in fall or spring will remove the growth that has the flower buds for the next season.
I picked my first strawberries last week, but the robins still beat me to the first ripe berries. I once read that animals and birds are colorblind, but I highly doubt that to be true. So, now the patches are netted and we’ll see who come out with the most!
With warm temperatures, high humidity, and much dew at night, be watching your rose bushes for mildew and black spot. Black spot will defoliate the shrub quickly if not prevented or stopped. The inner leaves of the plant will show a yellow blotch with a black spot in the center, and that leaf will soon drop as the fungus spreads from leaf to leaf, and it seems to happen overnight.
Mildew will show up as a powdery white spot on the leaf, causing the leaf to curl. Both of these diseases result in foliage loss and foliage loss, resulting in the energy and health of the rose bush being compromised … not a good thing if you expect the shrub to present a great show and survive our winter.
The diseased leaves that drop will host the fungus through the winter, so as soon as conditions are right, you get a repeat performance the next season.
Some varieties are very resistant to both of these diseases and other varieties seem to welcome them. If you have had a problem in the past, you can expect a repeat visit, thus prevention is much easier than a cure.