Dog, shade on list of culprits
Q: A couple of years ago my boxwood plants started to develop dead spots on their sides. It does not show on the tops of the plants. Could this be from a dog urinating on the plants? Could it be something else?
A: If there is a fairly large male dog that consistently roams this area, it is entirely possible he is marking these plants repeatedly. The salts in dog urine will do this.
It’s also possible, if this is on the north side of these plants, that excess shade could be causing them to thin out. You are trimming them in a downward taper, and that gives them more shade and less direct sunlight. (Not good for the plants.)
Q: How long do I have to wait to plant vegetables after I spray Roundup?
A: If you are talking about the original Roundup that has glyphosate as its only active ingredient, technically there would be no waiting period. It is inactive when it comes into contact with the soil. To kill grasses and other weeds it must go in through foliage. However, to be fair to the product, you need to give it 10 to 15 days to do its work.
It was such a successful product initially that the manufacturer decided to use the Roundup brand name as an umbrella to introduce other products with other active ingredients. Their instructions all differ. Therefore, I must caution you to read the label carefully to determine the recommended waiting period.
Q: What is the best way to get oak catkins off brandnew black mulch that we just spread over large beds? We do not have a blower, and the yard guy won’t be here for a while. Raking does not work.
A: A blower that would allow you to use a low speed would be best. Borrow one if you can, or make the investment. They aren’t all that expensive. Those catkins ball up and roll off fairly easily, but you’re right on the raking. They would carry off much of the mulch with them.
Q: What is the best way to rid my beds of wild dewberries? Their thorns are tearing my flesh off.
A: We live in a rural area, and I have wild dewberries (trailing blackberries) in my ground-cover beds as well. In other words, I speak your language.
I have found the easiest way to eliminate the plant is to use an asparagus knife (otherwise known as a dandelion digger) with my dominant hand and wear a leather glove on my other hand. Dewberries grow from a single stem coming out of the ground. If you can sever it just below the ground, you can pull the entire plant up and out very easily. That is much better than trying to spray.
Q: Something is eating into my rosebuds and ruining the flowers before they can open. The only insect that I have seen has been a stink bug, and I don’t think it was the culprit. What can I do to stop the problem?
A: It was probably some type of caterpillar. I suggest you apply a systemic insecticide as a soil drench. If your plants are pretty much
through this cycle of blooming, however, you may want to wait until three to four weeks prior to the fall cycle to apply it.
Q: We have a farm in East Texas, and this frame came with the farm. We do not intend to tear it down. It is probably 20 feet tall. We are going to plant trees and wildflowers around it and fence it off to keep the cattle away. We would also like to plant a vine that would be good for bees and hummingbirds. What would be hardy and really dependable?
A: I would recommend Madame Galen trumpet creeper. It is a very dependable and popular summer-flowering vine that would grow to the top of your frame and across the pipes. You might have to offer it some kind of support to get it up the corner posts, but after that it would take over.
For it and the trees that you plant, prepare to carry water for the first two or three years until they can get established. They will dry out very quickly in East Texas soils. You will want to water them deeply every four or five days. If you miss one watering, you could lose the plants.
Q: I planted two apple trees, a fig and the plum tree in February. The other trees are developing nicely, but the plum is sending out suckers from the trunk. I trimmed them off, but they came back again. What is going on?
A: The tree has suffered transplant shock. The top of the tree has died back, and you need to develop the strongest of those shoots as your new trunk.
That’s not all together a bad thing because you want eventually to have three scaffold branches at 22 to 24 inches from the ground extending out 120 degrees apart. That should be very easy to accomplish. You might even be able to use the top three shoots that are there right now as those scaffold branches. I can’t tell how far they are off the ground.
Be sure you water closer to the tree, too. I suspect you have vegetable in that outer ring, but that’s too far to expect the tree’s roots to reach.