Buds and Blooms: Bugs love this late-summer heat
By Medicine Hat News on September 2, 2017.
If you and your garden made it through the heat of this summer, congratulations! Remain vigilant with your deadheading and watering and the reward will be lots of fall blooms with our cooler evenings, especially roses. Deadheading spent flowers as soon as they wilt keeps them from going to seed and encourages new flowers to bud and bloom. The time to fertilize is over, except to do your lawn anytime between now and November. Getting supplies for the kids going back to school, and enjoying a last slow-pitch tournament may be occupying your thoughts, but don’t forget to buy your fall bulbs and plant a lot of them for spring excitement. Garlic, alium, tulips and daffodils all get planted in the next two months, with some good compost and bone meal added to your soil. Each spring I decided we need more colour and in autumn my husband plants more tulips. Know that deer like tulips but won’t eat daffodils. In spring you can give your emerging tulips a spray of Bobex to repel the deer. Take photos of your garden throughout the seasons to help you plan where to put what. You can plant perennials, trees and shrubs until October’s end and there are great sales on what is left available! Watering and getting the roots established at this time is less heat stress for the plantings. Amend your soil with some organic compost and water in with Root Booster to give a good start. My hubby and I enjoy sitting in our backyard watching the birds, butterflies, and bugs flitting about. A hummingbird has buzzed through a few times which is new to the yard! The Pinky Winky Hydrangea is also humming with many types of flies, bees and wasps, all beneficial pollinators. The yard is also full of adult green peach aphids or currant aphids and I dare not spray because the seven-spot ladybugs are everywhere, feasting. We have viewed the Tiger Swallowtail, the Red Admiral and many White Cabbage butterflies on the coneflowers, Joe Pye Weed, purple garden phlox, and pink Asclepias (butterfly weed). The Asclepias are interesting to observe as the seed pods split open and each seed has a small parachute of silky down. When this plant is cut it oozes a white milky sap. This perennial is also known as silkweed or milkweed and Monarch butterflies feast on it. We saw the White Cabbage Butterflies mating. Veggie gardeners don’t appreciate these butterflies because the females lay their eggs on cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli, the host plants for their larvae. You can hand-pick the larvae from plants; deter females with a light net as a barrier; or plant repellant plants like mint, sage, rosemary, nasturtiums, catmint, tomatoes and celery amongst the veggies they devour. Speaking of vegetables, be sure to keep watering your tomatoes consistently to avoid splitting and keep your squash, zucchini and pumpkins moist. We are not having our annual pumpkin festival this year but Eldorado Farms is still going to donate pumpkins to be sold at the Windmill, with all the proceeds going to support our local Children’s Wish Foundation. Check out the local greenhouses and farmer’s markets for fresh vegetables for canning or bake up some yummy zucchini carrot oatmeal muffins. If you would like to see a more exotic display of tropical butterflies go to John’s Butterfly House at the Windmill Garden Centre. Bev Crawford is the Perennial House Manager at The Windmill Garden Centre and John’s Butterfly House. 9-8
