Virus protocols in place at garden centres
Dear Helen: This is normally a busy time at garden centres. What protocols are in place to keep customers safe in this time of physical distancing and COVID-19?
G.L.
Conditions and regulations are changing daily, if not hourly, but at the time of writing this I’ve received varying messages from garden centres and nurseries.
The first consideration is to follow well-publicized guidelines to stay home if you are unwell and to observe selfisolation on return from travelling outside Canada.
Different garden centres and nurseries have laid out a variety of conditions for their customers. Phone or check the websites of the ones you plan on visiting.
I’ve heard from and checked on several. One gives the assurance that all common surfaces such as counters and wagon handles are kept disinfected. Another outlet asks customers to wear gloves. A third one I contacted takes pre-ordered items out to customers.
My closest local nursery has set out three guidelines: One customer at a time in the store; wear gloves; use the “tap” method of payment. I notice some stores in general are discouraging cash purchases.
Dear Helen: Thank you for writing about the pest that lays eggs in berries. Before reading the information you gave, I did not know what was causing little white worms in my raspberries. You described how to trap spotted wing Drosophila (SWD) flies with an inch of apple cider vinegar in a covered cottage cheese or similar container with four to six holes made around the rim. My question: How many of the containers should I put out in my raspberry patch?
S.F.
One trap is considered enough for the small area you describe, but I often put out two or three in my raspberries and adjacent, small strawberry patch, in hopes of catching as many flies as possible. The flies look like ordinary fruit flies, but the males have dark spots on each wing tip.
Be aware that SWD also infests other berries as well as cherries and other soft fruits. The eggs hatch into the maggots you’ve seen in your raspberries. Maggot feeding inside the berries and fruits causes soft and rotten spots.
Dear Helen: I am about to sow carrots, and I don’t know whether I need to cover the seeded area right away. I’m told the carrot rust fly does not become a problem until July. Is this true?
C.D.
No. There are multiple generations of the fly, from April through midautumn, and beyond that if the weather remains warm.
Adult flies emerge this month to lay eggs beside carrot stems. The eggs hatch into maggots that move to the root tips to feed for up to a month. Then they pupate and produce the next generation through June. another generation emerges mid-July to midAugust. Egg laying continues into the fall.
The initial generation is typically the heaviest. One prevention method is to seed after mid-May to avoid that first, heavy batch of flies. In areas of high rust fly populations, however, the only sure way to grow clean carrots is to secure floating row cover or insect netting over the carrot bed as soon as it is seeded.
Apology. My column for Saturday, March 21, included a series of garden events that I should have notified the paper to delete. I neglected to do this, and am very sorry for any distress their inclusion may have caused.
I send columns by email to the paper well ahead of their publication date, usually by about 10 days. This is to allow for technical glitches that arise occasionally and to give editors ample time to set up the Homes pages.
As cancellations began arriving on the Monday (16th) of that week, my immediate concern was to make event changes to the Wednesday column, which had been sent in. Then, I had to completely re-write the following week’s columns whose extensive list of spring events, already written up, needed to be deleted. In the flurry of phone calls and emails involved in confirming deletions, I failed to address needed changes to Saturday’s column. I apologize for this error.
GARDEN EVENT
Government House volunteering. The orientation meeting for potential new gardening volunteers in the Government House gardens, slated for Thursday, April 2, has been cancelled. Anyone interested in volunteering in the gardens can contact Kathryn and Dorothy at newgardenvol@gmail.com for information.