July 21,
2015, Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter © Kim
Willis
Hi Gardeners
 |
| Olina tango and other lilies |
It’s a beautiful
day here in Michigan. Over the weekend
we had close to 2 inches of rain so I won’t have to water for a few days. We seem to be in for a stretch of nice
weather. My Oriental and trumpet lilies
are starting to bloom and their scent is floating in on the air. I do love it when all the big lilies are
blooming. The tiger lilies are also
beginning to bloom.
Speaking of
lilies I have been most impressed with the Asiatic hybrid lily Olina
Tango. This lily has gorgeous flowers,
deep red fading to almost black at the center.
The stems are sturdy and about 3 feet high with numerous blooms. I only regret that the nursery sent me only 3
real Olina Tango lilies out of the 6 I ordered, the others turned out to be
other colors- pretty but kind of an odd mix color wise. There’s a picture here. The pink lilies were called Dutch Red. They aren’t as red as I thought they would be
and I probably would not have mixed those colors but it’s not too bad.
Other flowers
blooming are the garden phlox- boy does that stuff become invasive! Sunflowers, rudbeckia, coreopsis, liatris, Russian
sage, hollyhocks, larkspur, day lilies, bee balm and of course the hosta are
some things blooming now. More about
hosta flowers below. My streptocarpus,
moved outside for the summer, are blooming like crazy. My foxglove is sending up side shoots of flowers.
The garden is looking great tight now.
My
raspberries and blackberries are beginning to ripen. The corn has tiny ears forming. We are still eating lettuce although it’s
starting to turn bitter. The new cabbage
has been great and we have a trickle of ripe tomatoes coming in. It looks like we will have a good apple crop
this year.
Insect pests
are reaching a peak. Many people are
complaining about mosquitoes. Bean,
potato and cucumber beetles are feeding.
And Japanese beetles are the topic of the week in garden circles.
Japanese beetles and what to do about
them
Japanese
beetles,(Popillia japonica), are out and about now in good numbers. Some gardeners will have more trouble with
them than others and like many insects Japanese beetles can be worse in one
area in certain years than they are in other years. Sometimes you will see clusters of the
beetles on plants, but often the first sign that Japanese beetles are out are
lots of holes in plant leaves and flowers. Most gardeners have had to deal with this
serious pest at one time or another. The
first Japanese beetles were found in New Jersey in 1916 and since then have
spread west and south. They are as the
name suggests, native to Japan.
As they feed
and mate Japanese beetles release a scent that attracts other Japanese beetles
and populations in an area may soon contain thousands of beetles. They can do serious defoliation damage to
plants, although the plants will generally recover in late summer when feeding
damage is less. It is estimated that
damage and cost of controlling Japanese beetles to Americans is over 450
million dollars each year.
What they look like
The Japanese
beetle is a fat, oval, metallic bronze and green beetle, with a row of white
spots along the sides of the body. The spots are clumps of white hairs. The immature stage is a tan-white grub that
is found in the soil of grassy areas where it feeds on plant roots. It has a distinctive v shaped row of
bristles on its rear end. Japanese
beetles can fly fairly well.
Japanese beetles
consume all parts of plants. Adult
Japanese beetles will feed on over 300 species of plants, including most of our
ornamentals, trees, and fruits. They eat
the tissue from between leaf veins, turning them into ragged skeletons which
brown and fall off. They may also eat
soft fruit. The damage the grubs do in
lawns and on golf courses appears as yellow spots, where the turf can be rolled
back in patches like a rug.
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| Japanese beetle on dahlia. |
In Michigan,
late June to early July is the time when Japanese beetle damage on plant parts
above ground first becomes apparent and feeding continues for about a
month. However beetles emerging from the
soil can continue into August and some beetles may persist all summer. Feeding
on the roots of turf grasses is heaviest in the later part of summer and again
in early spring.
Beetle life cycle
When Japanese
beetles emerge from the soil they eat for a few days and then begin mating and
the females begin laying eggs back in the soil. In the afternoon she leaves the plants she
has been eating, goes to the ground and burrows up to 4 inches down and lays a
few eggs. This continues for days until
she has laid roughly 60 eggs.
In warm moist
soil the eggs will hatch in about 10 days and the new grubs begin feeding on
grass roots. Eggs and small grubs are
very susceptible to drying out and not irrigating the lawn in summer may help
control a grub population.
Control of Japanese beetles
in home landscapes
In July
homeowners can apply grub control products containing imidacloprid (Merit) and
halofenozide. In spring if damage is
apparent use grub products containing trichlorfon (Dylox) and carbaryl
(Sevin). Remember that these pesticides
will harm many kinds of animals in the soil and may have toxic effects on pets
and children too.
For
ornamental plants a general insecticide for ornamental plants can be used but
once again these will kill many types of insects, good and bad. Systemic
products may do some good - but the beetle has to eat part of the plant to be
killed. They are best used early, before
beetle populations get high.
For fruit trees, including ornamental types of
fruit trees, a multipurpose orchard spray should be used as directed on the
label. For vegetables use an insecticide
approved for edible plants. Vegetables
that don’t require pollination can be covered with lightweight row cover
material to exclude beetles.
Natural Controls
Hand picking
and using a hand vacuum to remove beetles as soon as they are seen is
helpful. Once beetles get established
they attract more beetles. Japanese
beetle traps that attract the beetles and then drown them have been around for
years, but in small yards the placement of traps can be a problem. The traps attract more beetles than might
normally be in the area and need to be placed a good ways away from plants you
want to protect.
Research
published in the Journal of Economic Entomology, 04/08/2009, found that a
mixture of two essential oils, wintergreen and ginger oil, was quite effective
at repelling Japanese beetles.
Peppermint oil was also a strong repellant. (Coffee and citronella oils
actually seemed to attract Japanese beetles).
More research is being conducted to find the best way to use these oils
as beetle repellants on crops. These
oils could be applied to food crops safely and would be relatively benign to
the environment.
Other
research conducted at the USDA Application Technology Research Unit in Wooster,
Ohio found that geraniums could be part of the war against Japanese
beetles. Entomologist Chris Ranger found
that Japanese beetles that ate geranium leaves were paralyzed within 30 minutes
and stayed immobile for up to 24 hours.
While immobilized they are easy prey for birds and other predators or
could be swept or vacuumed up.
Interestingly
enough the paralytic effect of geranium leaves on Japanese beetles has been known
since the 1920’s, about the time the pest arrived in the United States. Ranger and a colleague have just begun to
develop a natural pesticide using geraniums and have applied for a patent.
A few years
ago milky spore disease was introduced into areas where Japanese beetles are
found. This fungal disease attacks the
Japanese beetle’s immature stage- the grub that resides in your lawn destroying
grass roots. Milky spore disease is now
found in stores and garden supply catalogs for you to sprinkle over affected
areas.
A new
protozoan disease that also kills Japanese beetle is being released throughout
Michigan. These natural controls are safe for the
environment and kill only Japanese beetles.
Both the
milky spore disease and protozoan controls take many years to begin to be
effective in an area. But combining
those controls with faster acting repellents made from essential oils or a
geranium knock out spray could be the environmentally friendly solution
homeowners have been waiting for.
Growing hostas for their flowers
When most
gardeners think of hosta they are thinking about the lovely foliage that comes
in so many variations and how the foliage will add interest to the garden,
particularly gardens in the shade. But a
long time ago hostas were grown for their flowers, something that would bloom
in the shade. They were sometimes called
plantain lilies or funkia. Almost all
mature hosta plants bloom, but there are some hosta that put on better flower
shows than others.
 |
| Flowers of hosta 'Venus'. |
Hosta flowers
come in two color varieties white and shades of lavender. Some hostas also have
fragrant flowers. Flowers can take
several forms also, from trumpet shaped to bell like, and are produced in
clusters on a stem above the crown. Like
their foliage some hosta varieties have flowers that are large and on tall scapes
or stems, and others have smaller, shorter flowers. Hosta begin blooming in June in zone 5 and
continue through August, with each variety having a different bloom time. Mature plants with many crowns produce the
best flower show. Hosta plantaginea
varieties and hybrids with them usually have fragrant flowers. Hosta flowers are a favorite of hummingbirds
by the way.
Here are some
hostas known for their pretty flowers. 'Fragrant Bouquet', has white, fragrant,
flowers and has spawned many color sports, Fragrant
Dream’ with white flowers, 'Guacamole',
fragrant, pale lavender flowers, are two. 'Regal
Splendor' has 5 feet high spikes of
lavender flowers. 'So Sweet' is a
small hosta with white, fragrant flowers. ‘Raspberry
Sundae’ has red flower stalks and buds, flowers open lavender. ‘Honey Pie’ is a gold foliaged hosta
with lavender, fragrant flowers. ‘Aphrodite’ has large, double pure
white, deeply fragrant flowers on 2 foot stems. ‘Venus’ is
similar with single white trumpet shaped flowers. ‘Diamonds are Forever’ has purple
striped flowers. ‘Grape Fizz’ has fragrant
purple flowers. Hosta 'Purple Lady Finger' has narrow purple
flowers that don’t open up. Hosta 'Strawberry
Yogurt' has pretty purple flowers on reddish scapes. Hosta 'Tickle
Me Pink' has red scapes and fuchsia buds and bracts that open to reveal
reddish purple flowers.
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| Hosta Lemon-Lime sport in bloom. |
I have a
hosta that was given to me and I was told it was the variety ‘Lemon-Lime’, which is known for the number
of flowers it produces. The true ‘Lemon–Lime’ has a mound of flat, narrow,
chartreuse leaves with loads of 18" scapes of bell-shaped, purple-striped
flowers. Mine must be a sport or mutation of the
variety since the leaves of mine are lime green with a lemon yellow edge. But it is loaded with purple flowers in
mid-summer. Another named sport is Hosta
'Twist of Lime' which is quite compact – 4-5 inches tall - with
narrow chartreuse yellow foliage edged in green and deep violet flowers in late
spring.
My extremely floriferous
hosta, whatever its name really is, produces lots of seed pods and I had
several baby hostas appear this spring.
It looks like they are a cross with other hostas I have growing and it
will be interesting to see what the mature plants look like and how they
bloom. Many hostas cross breed easily
and if you let them form seeds, you can grow a variety of new plants and maybe
find something special among them. You
can even hand pollinate flowers to experiment with producing new plants.
Hosta flowers
can look pretty ragged as the blooms fade and if you are not interested in seed
pods, you can cut the scapes and wilted flowers off. However leaving the seedpods or a few of
them doesn’t hurt the plants and won’t cause the foliage part of the plant to
be smaller or less appealing. Some hosta
varieties flowers do not form seed pods as they are sterile hybrids. And some hosta produce seeds with very low
germination rates.
Hosta
seedpods can be harvested when they are brown and dry and the seeds
removed. This is usually about a month
after blooming. You can remove the pods
as they begin to split and shake out the seeds.
In nature hosta seeds begin to sprout soon after hitting the soil. You can take ripe dry seeds and sow them in
pots or flats right away or even drop them on the soil in a spot where you want
them to grow- although this is much less of a sure thing. You can also save the seeds for later
planting. Let them thoroughly dry then
put them in a tightly sealed container in a cool place. You can start seeds inside over the winter
under lights, then transplant outside in the spring.
Hosta’s don’t
come true from seeds so your baby plants probably won’t look like the parent. There are complicated genetic rules about what
type of plants can produce what kind of babies.
Green hosta usually produce more green hosta, hostas with different
colored edges usually produce solid color leaves and hostas with large white
centers may produce sickly albino plants.
If the seed pod of the hosta is streaked, the chances of seedlings
producing variegated foliage is higher.
There are more genetic “secrets” you can learn if you look up hosta
breeding.
Hosta
breeders are working to improve the flower show of various species of hosta,
creating varieties with pretty foliage and pretty, fragrant flowers. I think we will soon see hostas with red-purple
or pinkish flowers on the market. I like
to choose hostas that have both pretty foliage and nice flowers but it’s
sometimes hard to find information about the flowers when looking at the
descriptions in plant catalogs. I am
hoping that will change as more people become interested in hosta for their
flowers.
Renovating the strawberry patch
Mid July to mid-August
is a good time to renovate your strawberry bed.
June bearing strawberries need a renovation – basically clean up and
pruning- to produce strong healthy plants and a better crop next year. Everbearing strawberries could use this
treatment too, but most people prefer to let them keep sporadically producing
fruit. If your everbearing strawberries
are crowded or didn’t produce well so far it may be good to renovate them too.
First remove
all the old strawberry foliage to just above the plant crown. Cutting the foliage reduces foliar disease
through the summer and causes the plant to have a spurt of vigorous growth with
healthy new leaves. Make sure you make a
sharp clean cut with a sharpened mower blade, or hand trimmers. Don’t use weed “whackers”. Ragged leaf edges are more susceptible to
foliage diseases.
Rake debris
out of the bed, including the trimmed leaves and remove any weeds. Now thin the plants to about 9” apart from
center of the plant to the center of the neighbor plant. You can make rows or ‘beds” where plants are
staggered 9” apart. Strawberries can
produce many daughter plants and you may find you have enough new plants to
start a new bed or fill in bare spots in your old bed with the plants you
thinned out.
After
thinning apply a slow release granular fertilizer for vegetable gardens. Water the strawberry bed well and keep it
watered if weather conditions are dry.
That’s it- you have renovated your patch. Keep it weeded through the rest of summer and
mulch with straw just before winter and you should have a great strawberry crop
next spring.
Black- Eyed- Susan- Rudbeckia hirta- a native wildflower
In the
meadows and fields and along the roadsides you may find this charming
daisy-like flower growing. This pretty native plant has also been adapted for
our gardens in a variety of forms.
Black- Eyed- Susan’s are a familiar sight throughout Michigan and most
of the eastern half of the United States.
They are the state flower of Maryland.
The wild
Black- Eyed- Susan’s have bright yellow petals surrounding a dark purplish-
brown cone-like center. What most people
don’t realize is that each “petal” is a single “ray” flower, capable of
producing a seed. The cone is actually a
compressed group of tiny purplish “disk” flowers, each of which also produce a
single seed. Each wild Black Eyed Susan
composite bloom is about 2 inches across.
Plants bloom from late June until frost.
 |
| Domesticated Black eyed Susan's |
The Black-
Eyed- Susan plant grows 1-3 feet tall depending on growing conditions. The leaves are long and narrow and the edges
of the leaves and the stems are covered with fine hairs.
The seeds of
Back-Eyed- Susan’s are a favorite food of small birds like goldfinches and
chickadees. Rudbeckias have been turned
into many garden varieties that come in a number of colors and many have double
flowers. The flowers may be much larger than wild Black - Eyed- Susan’s. They may be sold under the name Gloriosa
daisies or just Rudbeckia.
Cannabis helps heal broken bones
One of the
old herbal uses of marihuana was to treat fractures and research done at Tel
Aviv University and Hebrew University and recently published found that cannabinoid
cannabidiol, a compound isolated from cannabis, made fractures in animals heal
faster and bones became stronger when the compound was administered to animals
with broken femurs. Clinical trials in humans will soon begin.
Once again it
is a shame that US researchers can’t even produce marijuana for research and
have great difficulty in conducting medical research with the plant. Cannabis has many, many medical uses and
research keeps finding more. Even though
medical use has been allowed in some states, including Michigan, the hoops that
people have to jump through to use the product are ridiculous. The latest incidences of overzealous law
enforcement involve children receiving medical marijuana for severe
seizures. It is difficult for children
to smoke marijuana- but currently that’s the only legal way they can consume
the product- with of course all the legal hassles marijuana medical use
entails. It is better for children to
consume the medication as an edible, usually in oil or syrup. But their parents risk going to jail if they
try to give it to them in this way. Some
risk it because it’s the only thing that works to stop the seizures and
marijuana has far fewer side effects than conventional seizure
medications. This demonization of an
extremely helpful plant has got to stop and the laws for medical use have to be
made reasonable.
Black ash baskets and the Emerald Ash
Borer
It always
amazes me when I learn about some tedious, complicated process that ancient people
developed to create something they needed or something beautiful. Who first discovered the process? How did someone discover that a black ash
log, a piece of lumber, could be pounded until it yielded strips of material
that could be woven into baskets?
Baskets make carrying and storing other things so much easier and black
ash baskets can be very pretty also. But
it’s a tremendous amount of work to get the black ash weaving material.
Black ash
grows in wet areas of the northern forests of America. First Nation People (Native Americans) use
black ash in several ways but one of the most interesting is the weaving of
baskets from strips of wood. First a
smooth straight tree has to be cut down and this couldn’t have been easy with
hand tools. A long smooth area of trunk
needed to be separated from the branches. Usually the trunk portion was then submerged
in a river or lake for a while. Next the
bark was removed and then the hardest work begins. The log is pounded with a heavy object in an
overlapping pattern over and over again.
This compresses the summer growth rings. It is hard and time consuming work.
As the rings
in the ash log are compressed a whole layer of wood will detach from the
log. It is scored down the log and
peeled off. The “splint” is scraped to
clean and smooth it, allowed to dry and then rolled up to store until divided
in basket strips. The trunk pounding was
repeated over and over again, yielding many layers of wood, each a slightly
different color. (This is an abbreviated
account of the process.)
When Emerald
Ash Borer invaded the northern woods it was feared that First Nation People and others
who still wove black ash baskets might have to give up the practice so they
wouldn’t violate quarantines or spread the beetle, which overwinters as larvae
in ash wood and can survive for up to 2 years after a tree is cut down. The USDA Forest Service's Northern Research
Station collaborated with the Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Potawatomi
Indians near Gun Lake, Mi. to find a way to preserve the tradition of using
black ash for basket weaving.
First Nation
People usually store black ash logs in water before processing them into basket
making splints. The research found that submerging the black ash logs in water
for 18 weeks in winter or 14 weeks in spring killed all the Emerald Ash borer
larvae. They published this work in the
journal of Agricultural and Forest
Entomology 2015. This research will
allow for Native Americans to continue making black ash baskets if they submerge
the logs for the appropriate times.
Growing raspberries
What says
summer more than a handful of tart-sweet raspberries? Raspberries are the perfect fruit for
Michigan gardeners to grow because fresh raspberries are difficult to ship and
very expensive when found in grocery stores.
Raspberries are easy for gardeners to grow compared to other fruit, and
don’t take much space. The plants are
inexpensive so buy enough to eat fresh and then freeze some for a delightful
winter treat.
Some raspberry varieties
for Michigan
Raspberries
come in red, purple, yellow and black.
There are summer bearing - [late June- July,] and ever-bearing, - small
crops in June and again in August-September. Fall bearing raspberries are just
ever-bearing varieties that are pruned so that they have only one heavier crop
in the fall. Summer bearing raspberries
produce the heaviest crops; you can freeze or can the excess. If you like fresh raspberries over a long
season choose a few plants each of summer bearing and ever-bearing. Red summer
bearers include Latham, Boyne, and Kilarney.
Royalty is a purple summer raspberry for Michigan. Jewel and Bristol Black are black summer
raspberries. Polena, Caroline and
Hertitage, are red ever-bearing
raspberries. Kiwigold is a yellow ever-bearing
raspberry.
Planting raspberries
Raspberries
should be planted in the early spring.
Buy certified, disease free raspberry plants from a good nursery. Generally raspberries are sold as dormant
roots, with a little stub of stem as a handle.
You can store these dormant roots in a cool place - [32- 50 degrees],
for a few days until you are ready to plant them. Sometimes you will find
potted raspberry plants in nurseries.
Even if you love raspberries, a small family will only need from 6-12
plants. Raspberries spread, and a small
row will soon be larger. Plant
raspberries about 2 foot apart in rows that are about 8 foot apart.
 |
| Raspberry plant |
One of the
best things you can do to ensure success with raspberries is to prepare your
planting area in advance. Clear the
area so there is no grass or weeds left in the row. To make raspberries easy to care for, they
should be attached to a trellis system of some sort. You can put sturdy posts at the end of each
row and string heavy-duty wires or cables between the posts, or you can use
fencing between the posts as support.
Mulch between the plants and mulch the paths or plan to mow the paths
often. Once weeds and grass take over a
raspberry patch it is a huge undertaking to get things cleaned up again and the
plants grow better without the competition from weeds.
Fertilizing raspberries
About two
weeks after planting, or when you notice the plants are starting to grow, they
should be fertilized with 12-12-12 or similar fertilizer. Use about 1/2 pound per 25 feet of row or
follow label directions. Don’t let
fertilizer directly touch the plants and water after fertilizing. About 6 weeks later repeat the
fertilization. Every year after that
your raspberries should be fertilized in early spring, just as growth starts,
with about 1 pound of 12-12-12 per 25 feet of row.
Watering
raspberries
Raspberry
plants do need lots of water, especially in hot weather and on sandy
soils. If dry conditions develop,
watering your plants deeply once a week will keep them developing fruit. Fruit that isn’t watered during dry spells
may be small and crumbly.
Pruning raspberries
Pruning and
thinning correctly is the key to keeping your raspberry plants strong and
productive. The roots of raspberries are
perennial, but the canes, or stems, each last only two years. Each type of raspberry requires slightly
different types of pruning. If you have
purchased a mixture of raspberry types it is best to keep the types together
and labeled so you know how to prune.
Summer
bearing raspberries should not be pruned at all the first year, just tie them
to the supports you have put in. They
won’t have a crop the first year. In the
second year, after they have had a crop and it has been harvested, cut off all
the canes that bore fruit right to the ground.
Leave all the new young canes that have developed. New canes have green
stems; old ones have brown, woody looking stems.
In the third
spring thin the canes of summer bearing raspberries you left to about 6 canes
per foot of row. Trim the ones you leave
back to chest height- about 4 foot- and if they had winterkill, trim off any
dead areas. Do your pruning in early
spring, just before growth starts, and make your cuts just above a leaf node,
[joint]. Repeat every year. Black and purple raspberries may have long side branches
the second and following years that should be shortened to about 10 inches.
Ever-bearing
raspberries may have a small crop the first fall. Do not cut off any canes, they will fruit
again early next summer on the same canes.
After those canes have produced fruit, cut them out. Don’t prune any canes the third year, and
thereafter, until they have born fruit again, but you can thin them out in the
spring if the rows are crowded and cut off winter killed areas. After the second year you may also want to
trim the canes back to about 4-foot high each year in the spring.
Fall bearing
raspberries are fairly simple to prune. Fall bearing varieties are actually
ever-bearers that are pruned differently.
In the first year you will get a small crop in the fall. In early spring of the second year cut all
canes right to the ground. You’ll get a
fall crop. Repeat every year- cut all
canes off in early spring. You will have
to thin plants in the rows in spring also.
Raspberry shortcake anyone?
Kim Willis
“He who has a garden and
a library wants for nothing” ― Cicero
Events, classes and other offerings
Please let me know if there is any event or class that
you would like to share with other gardeners.
These events are primarily in Michigan but if you are a reader from
outside of Michigan and want to post an event I’ll be glad to do it.
Master Gardeners if you belong to an association that
approves your hours please check with that association before assuming a class
or work day will count as credit.
Do you have plants or
seeds you would like to swap or share?
Post them here by emailing me.
An interesting
Plant Id page you can join on Facebook
Here’s a
seed/plant sharing group you can join on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/groups/875574275841637/
Here’s a facebook page link for
gardeners in the Lapeer area
Here’s a
link to classes being offered at Campbell’s Greenhouse, 4077 Burnside Road,
North Branch. Now open.
Here’s a
link to classes and events at Nichols Arboretum, Ann Arbor
Here’s a
link to programs being offered at English Gardens, several locations in
Michigan.
Here’s a
link to classes at Telly’s Greenhouse in Troy and Shelby Twsp. MI, and now
combined with Goldner Walsh in Pontiac MI.
Here’s a
link to classes and events at Bordines, Rochester Hills, Grand Blanc, Clarkston
and Brighton locations
Here’s a
link to events at the Leslie Science and Nature Center, 1831 Traver Road Ann
Arbor, Michigan | Phone 734-997-1553 |
http://www.lesliesnc.org/
Here’s a link to events at Hidden Lake Gardens, 6214
Monroe Rd, Tipton, MI
Here’s a
link to all the spring programs being offered at Seven Ponds Nature center in
Dryden, Michigan. http://www.sevenponds.org/education/progs/springprograms/
Here’s a
link to events and classes at Fredrick Meijer Gardens, Grand Rapids Mi
http://www.meijergardens.org/learn/ (888) 957-1580, (616) 957-1580
Garden Day 2015, August 1, 2015, 8
a.m. - 4:15 p.m. Veterinary Medical Center / Plant & Soil Sciences Bldg.,
MSU campus, East Lansing, MI
This is
MSU’s horticulture departments annual garden seminar. The public is welcome. Key note speaker is
Rick Darke, a widely published author, photographer, lecturer and consultant
focused on regional landscape design, planning, conservation, and enhancement. You
get a choice of 2 other classes and a closing speaker also.
Cost is
$85.60 for non-2015 Garden members prior to July 24, $95.60 on and after July
25th this includes lunch but not the evening reception.
Please
visit www.hrt.msu.edu/garden-day-2015/ for a full schedule, workshop
descriptions and more. Contact:
Jennifer Sweet, CMP, CTA, at 517-355-5191 ext. 1339 or hgardens@msu.edu.
MSU Plant Trial Field Day, August 4,
2015, 8:30 a.m. - 2 p.m. 1066 Bogue Street, Plant & Soil Sciences Bldg.
(1st floor), East Lansing, MI 48824
Commercial
growers, landscapers and advanced gardeners are invited to this annual event to
learn about some of the superior new plants and how they perform in
mid-Michigan in the MSU Trial Gardens. Plant performance, ornamental
characters, and special needs of plants will be covered. We will also host
presentations on the most recent research on the development and spread of
impatiens downy mildew and up-to-date discussions on the evolving ethics of
American gardeners. For this important and timely topic, Entomologists and
Horticultural Extension Specialists will bring us up-to-date on the latest news
in pollinators, native insects, and pesticides such as neonicotinoids.
The
$42/person registration fee (by July 30) includes morning refreshments, lunch,
parking, trial booklet, and the program.
Newsletter
information
If you would
like to pass along a notice about an educational event or a volunteer
opportunity please send me an email before Tuesday of each week and I will
print it. Also if you have a comment or opinion you’d like to share, send it to
me. Please state that you want to have the item published in my weekly notes.
You must give your full name and what you say must be polite and not attack any
individual. I am very open to ideas and opinions that don’t match mine but I do
reserve the right to publish what I want.
I write this
because I love to share with other gardeners some of the things I come across
in my research each week. It keeps me engaged with local people and
horticulture. It’s a hobby, basically. I hope you enjoy it. If at any time you
don’t wish to receive these emails just let me know. If you know anyone who
would like to receive these emails have them send their email address to
me. KimWillis151@gmail.com
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