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| Trumpet vine flowers |
Last evening when I was outside watering, I could see the
smoke from the wildfires in the west and Canada hanging over the fields like
fog. But you could smell the smoke, it
wasn’t fog. Those fires are hundreds of miles away, yet the smoke last night
would make you think it’s just a few miles away. Today it’s a little less
visible and I am hoping rain this afternoon will wash it out of the air.
I listened to the medium range agricultural weather forecast
last week. They were predicting the next
couple weeks the weather in Michigan would revert to dry and hot. Yet I look at
the forecast for this week and see several chances for rain. Doesn’t mean it
will happen, especially here in the thumb, where we aren’t getting the rain the
rest of you seem to be getting. Our last
good rain was the 13th. But
the point is the weather forecasters have already changed the forecast.
To me it seems weather forecasting has gotten worse, not
better with technology improvements in the last few years. I pay little
attention to forecasts other than for the same day and next day because they
constantly change. Maybe that’s good, because technology is fine tuning itself,
but it is frustrating when you are trying to plan outside work or recreation.
How is my garden handling climate change? After a late cold
start everything jumped ahead and bloom times for my perennials are 1-2 weeks
earlier than last year. The Rose of Sharon’s are starting to bloom. I already
have mums in bloom. The lilies will be done by August when just a few years ago
they didn’t start blooming until August.
Garden phlox are now blooming.
I have a lot of hosta in bloom right now. Hosta can actually
be quite pretty in bloom and some are fragrant. They were actually grown for
their flowers before they became popular foliage plants. And the flowers
attract hummingbirds as well as bees. Other things blooming right now that
attract hummingbirds are the trumpet vines and the jewel weed.
Jewelweed is a pain in the butt, it will come up everywhere
once you get it in your garden. It shoots it’s seeds from the pod and those
seeds must have a 100 percent germination rate. It’s one native plant you
should think three times about before planting.
It pulls up easily even though another plant will spring up in its place
almost immediately.
Trumpet vine is a pain to keep confined too, it’s everywhere
in my yard. Maybe that’s why I’m not big into native plants, most of them seem
way too aggressive for gardens.
I am a little upset that the morning glories I planted that
were supposed to be “Heavenly Blue”, are just plain old purple like the ones on
the back fence, well at least the first one to bloom is. I was trying to get
some new colors of morning glories in here as mine have all reverted to wild
purple.
Speaking of early, what used to be a sign fall was coming
was a tiny fluffy insect called the fairy fly or woolly aphid, I saw some this
weekend visiting the gerbera daisies on my porch of all things.
The woolly
aphid Prociphilus or Eriosoma species
Have you ever seen what appears to be a bit of fluff
motoring around your plants? Not drifting but actually flitting back and forth,
landing and taking off again. If you look closely the tiny blueish white things
with a fat, oval purple body will remind you of a fairy with feathery wings.
They are probably how the whole fairy thing got started. Sometimes they are actually called Fairy Flies.
These aren’t fairies or a bug with good intentions, however.
They are actually the adult flying stage of the woolly aphid. Woolly aphids are
close relatives of true aphids, those common garden invaders. Except these
buggers are covered with white waxy hairs which protect them.
When a whole bunch of woolly aphid nymphs get together it looks like wool or a fuzzy white layer on a tree branch or inside a curled leaf. When flying through the air as individuals it looks like someone has remote control over dandelion fluff. Both the nymph or non-flying stage and the flying stage have fluffy hairs covering them.
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| Woolly aphid or fairyfly Bugguide.net |
Like most aphids, woolly aphids have mouthparts like tiny
needles that they stick into plants to suck up plant juices. There are several
species of woolly aphids and different species prefer different plants,
although most woolly aphids attack trees and shrubs. In home landscapes they
are often found on apple and crabapple trees or beech trees. Hackberries,
maples, elms, alders and some other trees and shrubs can be attacked. Some
species have two hosts, a primary one and a secondary one.
The sap sucking is done on all parts of the plant, even sometimes
on roots. When tree bark has been wounded by pruning or other damage they may
concentrate there. Where cicadas have slit open tree bark woolly aphids may
cluster around the wound.
The feeding causes leaves on trees to curl and yellow, and twigs
to look deformed. Trees and shrubs are weakened but rarely die from the damage.
When woolly aphids feed on the roots of young trees it’s a more serious problem
and can cause death of the young tree.
This often happens in apple orchards and orchard owners take steps to
control the pests.
Another sign of woolly aphids is the “honey dew” they
excrete. Honey dew is a polite word for fairyfly poop. Its sticky and obnoxious
and often turns black from sooty mold. It can damage cars and other things if
it gets on them. Bees and flies are attracted to fairyfly poop because it’s
sweet from the tree sugars.
Woolly aphids have another weird attribute. Sometimes when
colonies of the fluffy buggers are disturbed, they raise their butts in unison
and waggle them as a threat. Is it a threat? Well, many people say the fluffy fairyflies
sting and researchers found this to be true. But woolly aphids don’t chase
people to sting them, you would need to handle them to get a poke and it’s
harmless. They also do not want to be in your house or eat people food.
Woolly aphids lay eggs and also produce live babies. The wingless
aphids feeding on a plant generally produce live young. The flying stage is
usually the last stage of the life cycle and usually occurs in late summer or
fall. Flying female woolly aphids lay an
egg, covered in white fluff, on the bark of a tree species they prefer, which
will overwinter and start new colonies in the spring. In some species colonies
of wingless woolly aphids also have the ability to overwinter.
Control of fairyflies or woolly aphids usually isn’t needed
because the feeding damage isn’t lethal. Control is hard to accomplish. Things like
neem oil and dish soap don’t kill them because their waxy fluff protects them. Other
contact insecticides also work poorly on them. A strong stream of water can
wash thick colonies off and kill them in some instances. Systemic pesticides
will kill them, but many people do not want to use those on landscape plants
because they damage pollinators. If you have apple trees you need to protect,
ask a county Extension office for recommendations for your area.
Using a fly swatter on flying fairyflies or clapping them in
your hands is effective and somewhat satisfying if you dislike fairy hyperbole.
You can train the kids to kill fairies this way.
Changes
in the garden
I was out looking at my wild and colorful garden and
thinking how different it was from last year. The daylilies are bigger clumps,
and the roses are smaller this year. The hostas are larger. The oriental lilies
were large but are flopping. My hardy hibiscus are much larger clumps than last
year, although they aren’t blooming yet. Of course, the annuals are a different
color, and I added a few things here and there.
No matter what a gardener does, the garden will look a bit,
or a lot, different each year. Perennials mature into full glory or fail to
make it through winter. Trees provide more shade than last year, or they are
cut down. Weather happens. Accidents happen. You move or add plants or plant
babies happen. The point is, gardens evolve, just as a meadow in nature does.
It’s true what they say about perennials. First year they
sleep, second they creep, third they leap. Sometimes in the fourth year and
beyond they get bigger or better, other times they begin to fade back.
Perennials don’t last forever, there’s a natural life span to each species of
plant. Some live 50 years, others barely three.
Some gardeners love the way their garden looked in a certain
year and they try very hard to get it to look the same every year. But unless
your garden is a few simple shrubs you prune religiously, it isn’t going to
happen. Nature doesn’t work that way. Gardeners should learn to embrace change.
My own garden is one where things are crammed in, I’m always
looking for a spot to fill. No polite clumps of plants separated by neatly
raked wood chips for me, no, I prefer the cottage garden style. There’s lots of
green splashed with color. If you look close there are probably weeds mixed in
among the plants. There’s literally no mulch or bare ground showing once June
arrives.
In May I survey the beds and decide where to tuck in some annuals or summer bulbs. I decide on a color scheme when I get to the greenhouse, although I keep in mind what colors the dominant perennials are. For example, in summer and fall there’s a lot of yellow in the perennial colors so I look for annuals that can add some contrast.
In late summer I am ripping out yellowing daylily foliage
and ostrich fern. Late summer and fall look different in my garden from earlier
in the summer. Hopefully, the late bloomers carry it through. I tend to buy
more late blooming perennials each year because it seems that’s when the garden
needs color.
I usually love it when plant babies pop up and change the
scene. Sometimes I need to move them to better places but many times they are
allowed to do their thing. Hostas, for instance, have scattered babies through
my gardens. For whatever reason most of them mature into large plants so I do
move them back away from paths and try to separate them if they come up too
close together. In a few years those spots will look different when the tiny
hosta mature.
In most years I am satisfied with how things turn out, even
if it’s not exactly as planned. I take pictures throughout the year so I can
decide over winter where changes might need to be made. I note mistakes so I’ll
fix them early in the spring. This year, for example, I planted some new
hollyhocks but by mid-summer they were buried behind the 4 feet high ostrich
ferns and the blooms barely visible.
My husband is always asking when I’ll get to the place where
the garden is “finished” and I can just let it come back each year to
enjoy. That may happen when I cannot
really garden anymore but until then I’ll be adding and subtracting, tweaking
and moving and looking for new plants.
Change is good. It’s what gardeners do.
“Deep summer is when laziness finds
respectability.” – Sam Keen
Kim Willis
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