Timely Tips - Expert Gardening Advice

Most people don't water deeply enough for perennials. The moisture needs to go down at least 12 inches for the optimum root growth. If you don't water long enough, the water doesn't go down deep enough and the plant's roots will start to grow up near the surface. You'll have to water more often and the plants will not make it through the winter.

Perennials

Water once per week

Shade Plants

Water twice per week

Lawn Watering Tip

When it comes to lawns, the opposite is true, because grass roots are very shallow. Watering for more than an hour is a big waste of water. So for lawns you water more often, but for shorter periods.

Never completely empty your garden or fish pond to clean it. Only empty 1/3 to 1/2 the water. This gives you a 'starter' for the balance of your pond.

Cleaning Your Pond:

Skim out the debris in the bottom — all that stuff is going to cook up a great crop of algae.
Don't throw it away! If you can save the stuff and let it dry, then you can mix it into your garden soil — it's pure nitrogen!

Weed Barrier Fabric / Landscape Cloth

Don't ever use this stuff in your garden, or anywhere else for that matter!

It does not work — you'll still get weeds
Plants won't grow as well because they're not getting the water, nutrients, and air that they need
It's a huge awful job to get the stuff back out after it's been in for a couple of years

In the Cover Story I talk about using composted leaves on the garden as a mulch, but that doesn't mean that covering the garden with leaves in the fall is just as good. It's not.

Important: The leaves and plant material should decompose outside of the garden. Covering the crowns of perennials for the winter is especially bad for increasing insect and disease problems.

Best Fertilizer for Perennials

Beware of the cheap imitators!

What makes Osmocote special:

Each granule contains all of the ingredients, so it makes little difference how you spread it
Plants get all they need when they need it
Releases by soil temperature — the plants get fertilizer when they need it, and as much as they need

It doesn't get any easier than that!

Cleaning all dead leaves and plant material out of the garden in the Fall (especially over the crowns) will help keep the slugs out. Also pull the mulch well away from the plants. If you have plants that overlap each other (like Hostas) there is really no need for mulch in those areas.

Home remedies work to some extent, and if you have a small garden with a small problem, by all means try them, but for a large garden area these methods will be annoying at best:

BEER put out in shallow dishes at ground level. The slugs crawl in and drown. But, the beer has to be fresh to work! Hey, these guys aren't stupid!
SALT sprinkled in a solid line around the plants, they won't crawl through salt. In fact, you can sprinkle salt directly on the little buggers, and they disintegrate. Gross! O.K., have you stopped ordering escargot yet?!

THE BEST REMEDY

You're not going to like this, but trust me, it is the best slug solution. It's been scientifically proven that cutting the slug in half with your pruners or scissors, and leaving them on the ground is the best method. It keeps the other slugs away. (Don't ask.) Now we've really sealed the deal on your escargot ordering!

Pro tip: Slugs need moisture to move, so going out in the early morning when there's dew, or after a rain is the best time to find them. The chemical treatments are ghastly, and harmful to your pets. I wouldn't have it anywhere near my yard.

Sorry to say that there really is no such thing as a 'deer-proof' plant. There are some things that they prefer over others, but depending on your area and the winter weather, they will eat anything and everything. Feeding them does not keep them out of your garden, it just brings it to their attention. If you're in an area where the deer have gotten used to human presence, then a dog barking, you yelling, or hanging out deodorant soaps probably won't help either. But if they are still relatively wild, all of these things do help some.

There are two spray products on the market that work:

ROPEL

A systemic spray — if you spray any part of the plant, it goes into the entire plant. Soaking tulip bulbs in Ropel before planting keeps animals from digging them up.

TREE GUARD

Not systemic, so you must spray all parts, but it doesn't wash off. Goes on white and dries clear. A little goes a long way!

⚠️ WARNING: Both sprays will not wash off your hands either, so be sure to wear gloves when using.

💡 SPECIAL HINT:

When my dog was a puppy I used Tree Guard on my wooden table legs that she wanted to chew. It worked!

There is one sure thing that no animals bother in the garden — Daffodils!

So if we could just make everything taste like daffodils we'd have it licked (so to speak).

When using pre-emergents for weed control, like Preen, be sure that you first remove all of the existing weeds from the garden. These treatments only work on the surface of the soil.

Important Note:

If you apply pre-emergent, and then pull weeds and disturb the soil, the seeds coming up from underneath will still germinate.
These chemicals only work by keeping seeds from germinating — they do not work on weeds already growing.

Word of Caution:

These chemicals do not know the difference between weed seeds and other seeds, so if there are things in your garden that you want to grow from seeds, don't apply these products.

Timely Tips from the Garden

Watering

Perennials

Shade Plants

Lawn Watering Tip

Garden Ponds

Cleaning Your Pond:

Please Don't!

Weed Barrier Fabric / Landscape Cloth

Mulch

Osmocote

What makes Osmocote special:

Slugs in the Garden