Garden Hints from Skyline Nursery
ON PRUNING: Never arm a fruit tree with a pair of pruning shears! Specially pertinent if you are committing sap shed and are standing beneath. True confessions by yours truly, who a few years ago left a pair perched twenty feet above while he went below to survey the butchery. Bad karma — or what. Down they flew attempting to do some spaying of their own. The point was well made as it embedded itself to the bone of my left thumb. To this day, I have no feeling in this digit of mine. Then again, things could have been much worse.
DEAR PROBLEMS? Use cayenne pepper as you would drip coffee. Fill a Melita funnel with the pepper and pour in boiling water. Then, use four cupfuls and pour into a tank sprayer. Fill with water and apply to foliage. The pepper will penetrate the leaves and last some two weeks. The deer will be most appreciative of your spicing up their lives.
So will your spouse if you don’t dispose of, or set aside, the ‘plastic’ filter. My now ex’s morning coffee was an exclamation point never to be repeated. Please dispose of, or set aside that used filter.
Use of blood meal as a summer fertilizer will also put them off their feed. And chemically speaking the sprinkle of Deer Away is relatively effective.
GINGERED SLUGS. “Ginger goes ballistic in war against slugs.” Like the Ginger of Gilligans Island, this is a spicy weapon of choice. Potent but not toxic against people, pets, or the environment. Powdered ginger is a potent snail and slug repellent, when spread on the ground around cherished plants it creates a Maginot line of death over which slugs and snails dare not cross. Buy in bulk and save big bucks.
MORE ON SNAILS & SLUGS Use grapefruit rinds. Cut them in small pieces, then dry them in a dehydrator. When needed, soak them in a mixture of water to which you add metaldehide or other liquid slug controls. The rinds will last longer than any other bait and are not edible to other creatures.
Beer is another old time remedy — actually it is the yeast in beer that they are attracted to, so make a mixture of yeast, sugar and water, which should work just as well. Dissolve 1 Tb’s. sugar in a gallon of lukewarm water, then add 1 tsp. of yeast. Prepare this before nightfall. Pour into disposable containers and place them in strategic places in your garden. The lip should be slightly higher that the surface of the ground so beneficial beetles are not trapped as well. If you have a problem with strawberry root weevils disregard this advise.
I will also mention that slugs actually disperse flower and wildflower seeds so keep that in mind!
When planting rockery plants in containers, and if you are concerned about drainage, then opt for deeper pots. To further enhance drainage, use the inner cardboard tubes of paper towels or toilet tissue rolls. Insert them from the bottom of the container, then fill the balance with your plants and the soil mix. Fill the cardboard tubes, with perlite or pumice, then remove.
Finally you should try to obtain some commercial product that includes the nematode Phasmarbabditis hermaphrodita Nemaslug is the first one I ever heard of. Works on slugs — not so well on snails.
Would you believe that it England they are even developing a robot to chase them, powered by the digested gases produced by the eaten slugs. Sounds like a winner to me.
TROUBLE SLEEPING? Use sachets of your favorite herbs such as rosemary. Forgotten is the soporific benefit of fresh or dried hops. A pillow laid next to your head will do much to turn out your lights. Or ‘flype’ an old sock with hops. Knot it well and toss it in your dryer with your bedding. It may well get your bed hopping. At the very least you won’t awake with headaches, nor hangover either.
Hydroprills and other supplements to enhance plant growth. I strongly recommend their use. If using the dry gels, try placing them above any fertilizer you put in the planting hole. Fertilizer tends to hasten their deterioration. Another good product comes in a liquid form. Pro-Tekt contains potassium silicate. It really does help improve heat and drought tolerance in plants. Both products increase resistance to environmental stress thereby creating an environment for healthier, stronger, hardier plants. Using good compost, peat moss will do much the same. These are recommendations for tough situations … and considering the expense of plants, a cheap insurance policy. Most good garden mixes now incorporate these products.
That partner I spoke of, once spent an amorous spring afternoon stuffing all my old socks with freshly collected cougar dung. These were to be hung in our fruit trees to keep the deer away. It works by the way, though to this day I’m not certain if it was my socks or the cougar manure.
You may ask, who did the collecting? Being the gentleman that I am, it was always ‘ladies first.’ She was very quick of hand, and the aroma of this collecting and distribution did precede us — furthermore, community plagiarism had the sad and unfortunate consequence of drying our source up.
One remains philosophical. Life, after all is but a crap game. So friends follow our lead, write this …… Zoo Doo and special order cougar manure, specify Cougar, and don’t accept any Lion substitute.
I still remember those romantic springtime wafting’s, it was close to Valentines day and the Cougar-roma was an after shave like no other. I was left stuffing doggedly away while she danced her lithe feline ways.
We still communicate – at a considerable distance! More on my dear!
With that I’ll end until I hear from some of your own! Herb Senft © 1999