- Author: Dustin Blakey
This is the time of year that folks get concerned about defoliation of their elm trees. Usually the culprit is a small yellow beetle called, appropriately enough, the Elm Leaf Beetle. It eats elm leaves.
The adults cause small shot holes in the leaves, but the larvae will turn a leaf into skeletons. That's what we're seeing now in late July and early August. The larvae have big appetites!
This is the second generation of the pest this year. The first happened in June. Soon the larvae will crawl down the tree to pupate and repeat the cycle once again. Aberdeen and points south will probably have 3 generations this year. Bishop and Big Pine may also have 3 if the weather stays warm and we have a long autumn, but usually have 2 generations since the growing season is shorter.
There isn't much point in spraying the tree canopy now or using systemic insecticides this late in the season. If you notice the larvae crawling down the tree, it is probably worthwhile to do a band spray on the trunk with an approved insecticide. This is about when that happens on average in Independence and Lone Pine. Big Pine and Bishop are a week or two behind. Since the heat started early, we may be sooner than average this year. The only way to know is to inspect your trees often. Temperature drives development of this pest.
If you notice an accumulation of pupae at the base of the tree, vacuum or sweep them up right away.
Largely this is a pest of humans more than elms if your trees are otherwise healthy. They aren't doing the tree any good, but most of the problem is the mess and lack of foliage in landscapes. Keep that in mind if you decide to treat. There are dozens of elms in Owens Valley that get these every year and never get treated, yet are still alive and well.
You can find a lot more information about these insects on the Elm Leaf Beetle page at the UC IPM program website. It includes information that can help you to decide whether to attempt control of them.
- Author: Harold Mc Donald
Last time I extolled the virtues of ornamental grasses for the garden. They exhibit such diversity in size, color and growth habit that you can use grasses in many different ways—as a tall screen, a low border, to soften the edges of walls and other hardscape elements, and to provide texture to mixed beds. Some garden designers aim to have roughly half the landscaping devoted to grasses. Here's a nice article from Fine Gardening on designing with ornamental grasses. Sunset has a handy little book—Landscaping with Ornamental Grasses—that's a good introduction to grasses with lots of photos. One more book that I have to plug (that's actually a grass pun!) is California Native Plants for the Garden, in my opinion the single best book on the subject.
As I said last time, aside from a bit of spring maintenance, ornamental grasses are extremely carefree. They do better without fertilizer, they have ba0sically no diseases or insect pests, and most are relatively drought tolerant. Of course, like any other plant, you will want to give them some extra water the first season or two to develop their root systems, but after that they can go quite a while without water, at least when compared with other garden plants.
There are so many grasses to choose from—cool season and warm season, clumpers and runners, and even some things for sale that look like grasses but aren't (e.g. rushes and sedges). I think the most important factors to consider are how much water you want to provide and what size plant you want. While I certainly don't claim to have exhaustive knowledge of all your grass choices, I do have probably a dozen species that I have grown for many seasons, and below are some of my personal favorites.
Calamagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster' feather reed grass. This is probably one of the most familiar ornamental grasses, and deservedly so. It is widely used in commercial landscaping. The Reno Convention Center is a good place to see hundreds of plants. This one is pretty hard to beat: a compact footprint for such a tall (3-5') grass, beautiful flowers that provide interest from light pink in late spring to a handsome golden tan that lasts through the fall and winter. One interesting thing to note is that the seeds of this hybrid are sterile, so no worries about unwanted babies!
Deergrass Muhlenbergia rigens This California native is regal in all ways. The plants look like giant pincushions, 5 feet tall and about as wide, and they send up dozens of spike-like flowering stems. This is about as carefree as plants come. Give it sun and space and water once a week and it will thrive. Like many natives, if you give it a gravel mulch and a bit more water, you'll probably get lots of volunteers. That's a good thing, because if you've got the space for it, a mass planting of deergrass is hard to beat!
Silver beardgrass Bothriochloa laguroides ssp. torreyana (formerly Andropogon saccharoides) Yeah, the scientific name is a mouthful, but this is another one of my favorite discoveries. From what I can find, this is not truly native to California, but it is widespread in the state. This is another medium size grass, foliage about 18”, with flower spikes extending another few feet. At the end of these erect spikes are silky little puffs that are perhaps my favorite grass flowers. The leaves turn from red to purple to burnt orange in the late fall, and the flowers seem to glow in the more subdued sunlight of the cool season. The plants are a little bit floppy, so it's best to plant them in masses, where they are simply spectacular. This one can get by without much water. If you want to plant it where it gets regular water, it will be happy with that as well, but it will reseed even more readily.
Miscanthus silvergrass Dozens of cultivars have been created. One of the most widely available is ‘Morning Light,' and if you have room for it, it's a real gem. This is one that gets big (6' and more) and will need dividing every few years, so you may want to consider whether you're willing to commit to a fair bit of manual labor to maintaining this beauty.
Panicum virgatum switchgrass This is a native of the tall grass prairies of the Midwest, and is an important crop not only in native pastures and soil conservation, but also as a biomass crop and for carbon sequestration! As you might guess, it can get big—potentially 8-10', but about half that height in my yard. Despite its utility, this is one gorgeous ornamental grass as well. You can find cultivars with deep green, bluish or even purple-tinged leaves, and the airy flower heads are among the most lovely you'll find. You'll get all that and some of the best fall color around—golden, orange and flaming red.
So, where can you find these wonderful plants? The first three are pretty widely available garden plants. I've seen all of them in local nurseries. The last three are a little harder to find. Deergrass plants and seeds are available at many brick-and-mortar native plant nurseries. Theodore Payne in Sun Valley (near San Fernando) and Tree of Life Nursery between Lake Elsinore and San Juan Capistrano are two good ones in SoCal. I've never seen plants for purple three-awn and silver beardgrass available (and, believe me, I look at a lot of native plant websites!), but I got my seeds from Plants of the Southwest, a great nursery out of New Mexico. Bluestem Nursery in Canada has a great selection of reasonably-priced grasses and is a great site to visit just for information.
One last thing: most grasses are easy to grow, and sometimes this can create problems not just for the gardener, but for the surrounding habitat as well. Pampas grass has escaped gardens and become an unwelcome part of the landscape of much of the California coast. Pennisetum setaceum is a wonderful grass that has overtaken many native grasses along the roadsides of large areas of the southern California coast. Though I am not aware of any ornamental grasses that have become invasive in the high deserts of the Eastern Sierra, it's always a good idea to check locally before planting any plant—not just grasses—that might be a problem in your area. Here's a website that lists more than 200 grasses and grass-like plants that are considered invasive in some part of the US, while this one has an inventory of California invasive plants. None of the grasses I have suggested are on either list.
- Author: Harold Mc Donald
I don't know if it's an American thing or a universal trait, but we all seem to love an underdog, and I've always had a special place in my heart for the perennially underappreciated ornamental grasses. Like Rodney Dangerfield, they just don't get the respect they deserve!
Every day of the winter I am reminded that these stalwart members provide much of the interest in my garden during the offseason. In our climate, nearly nothing besides conifers stays green year round. Many bushes that retain their leaves in milder climes lose them in the Eastern Sierra. Though these skeletons can have their own subdued appeal, a landscape of endless gray is not terribly exciting. Dried grasses provide touches of yellow, orange, and even red to an otherwise drab winter landscape. The setting sun sparkles through their golden inflorescences, and nothing is quite as beautiful as a new carpet of snow lying at their feet.
They provide a unique vertical element in the garden. A mass planting of grasses makes a great backdrop for flowers and other forbs in the warmer season. Their green luxuriance is the very essence of summer. And they come in all sizes, so there's a place for ornamental grasses in any garden area.
Grasses provide more year-round interest in the garden than anything else I can think of, and yet they are relatively carefree. When most people think of grass, they picture a lawn. What could require more work than turf grass? Endless hours of watering, fertilizing, and mowing. Ugh! But unlike their thirsty cousins, many ornamental grasses are relatively xeric, and during the growing season all you have to do is give them a bit of water, step back and let ‘em grow. And grow they do, once things heat up! We all know about the prodigious growth rate of bamboo, like the rest of the grasses, a member of the family Poacaeae.
The only downside to ornamental grasses is their very considerable upside—they can be too successful! Most ornamental grasses grow in clumps, from the inside out, so the centers tend to die off after a few years. By digging them up and dividing them, you are rejuvenating the plant. Give your grasses a “hair cut” once new growth begins in the spring. Every few years, dig up the plants, divide them, discard the dead bits, and you'll have dozens of new grasses to plant or share with friends. With smaller grasses like Festuca glauca (blue fescue), this is a relatively minor task.
On the other hand, dividing something like Miscanthus sinensis is not for the faint of heart, and special tools may be required. Just getting the root ball out of the ground may be a two-person job! After many years of backbreaking work, I've found that the best way to divide these monsters is with a reciprocating saw (sometimes called a Sawzall). I bought a corded one last year for less than $50 and it was a lifesaver. If you already have a chain saw, you could even use that! Here's a video that illustrates how power tools can be used to transform a previously impenetrable mass of roots into dozens of healthy new plants.
Next time we'll cover some of the best ornamental grasses for the Eastern Sierra. Stay tuned!
- Author: Jan Rhoades
To provide a good home for our plants we need to incorporate some organic matter, usually compost – but not an overload – just the right amounts over time contribute to long term soil fertility, good soil structure and increase the soil's capacity to hold water and air.
All those amendments have their place and their purpose. What are you looking for? How much do you need? How is this product applied? What's in it? Keep in mind that this is an annual event, or even a seasonal event if your gardening season is long and you plant crops successively. Someone once said, “Begin with the end in mind.”
There are organic fertilizers such as compost, aged manure, rock phosphate, soybean meal, and fish meal, and there are inorganic fertilizers that are available either as a single nutrient or multi-nutrient product. These fertilizers can be slow release providing nutrition over time or soluble like an athlete's energy drink, providing quick nutritional value.
Most soil has some residual nutrients, however, only a soil test can assess what is there. Fertilizing without the results of a soil test is like eating everything in the pantry hoping to get the nutrition you need. Additionally, this practice can exacerbate an existing problem or imbalance. A soil test will also tell you the pH which, if too high or too low, can affect the uptake of nutrients present in the soil.
A soil test is a good place to begin to understand what kind of amendments might be needed to build your soil. Generally, DIY kits are not as reliable as sending a soil sample to be analyzed by professionals.
We all want to be thrifty, however, there are a few things you should never add to your garden soil:
- Un-decomposed wood chips or sawdust – these materials are high in carbon but lack enough nitrogen to decompose quickly – so they use up nitrogen that plants want and need.
- Fresh manure can harm plants due to elevated ammonia levels. – Use only aged, composted manure that has reached at least two heating cycles (130-140 degrees F) Also, know that nitrogen levels in composted manure are low and phosphorus and potassium levels are higher – so adjustments will have to be made. Also, salt levels will be higher.
A good way to remember all this is that fertilizers feed plants and compost feeds the soil. Nutrients alone cannot keep plants healthy if they are living in poor soil. Compost improves the mobility of air, water in the soil, and makes nutrients more available to plants.
Finally, there is such a thing as too much compost and too much fertilizer. Armed with the results of your soil test, you will be able to make wise choices about what to buy, how much to use, and when to apply it. When in doubt, a good quality all purpose composted soil amendment and an all purpose fertilizer are probably a reasonable way to get started. Of course, be sure to use them as directed on the bag.
For more in depth information on soil and composting be sure to use the links on the website. This year, biggest tomatoes ever – right??
Harvesting Castings from your Worm Bin
After about three to six months of being fed, compost worms will have created enough compost to harvest. In this two bin system, when your bin is getting full you are ready to add the next layer of bin, nesting it on top. This works because you will stop feeding in the lower bin, and add food to the top bin. As a result, many worms migrate to the top bin through the air holes in the bottom of that bin.
To Start The Second Bin:
- Remove bedding and any uneaten food scraps you find and place in the upper bin. If you are using a system with only one bin, reserve the bedding and uneaten food to put back into the original bin.
- Many worms will be in the top third of the bin with compost. You can also take some of this compost with worms and transfer to the upper bin.
- Ensure a one inch layer of bedding in the upper bin, as before.
- Start feeding in the top bin. After about a week or so, many of the remaining worms in the lower bin will have moved to the upper bin. Some worms, however, don't like change and will stay in the lower bin reworking the compost.
To Harvest Compost:
- Dump the contents of the lower bin onto newspaper or plastic.
- From the pile you have dumped out, separate the compost into sections, making cone shaped piles.
- Worms do not want to be in the light: worms left in this compost will move away from the light, toward the bottom of each pile.
- Gently remove the top layer of compost from each pile, until you start to see worms.
- Let the worms continue to move to the bottom of the pile, and gently remove more compost from each pile.
- Working in about 20 minute increments, you will be left with piles that are mostly compost worms.
- Put your compost worms back into the bin, with the reserved paper and food.
- There may still be some worms in the compost you've harvested. In most environments they will not last long in the garden, but you will have retained the majority of worms to keep your bin working.
Using Worm Compost
Now that you have harvested the castings you have a nutrient rich soil amendment to feed to your plants. By adding this compost to your garden or to house plants you will help your plants thrive. These castings will help condition your soil and also add nutrients and beneficial microorganisms. When first harvested, the compost is damp, lumpy and clay like. This can be added to the garden right away or you can let it dry out to store. When dry it becomes a fine grained product that you can sprinkle at the base of plants. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:
- Add up to 20% vermicompost into potting mix or garden soil.
- Sprinkle a layer at the base of plants; do not pile up against plant stems.
- Cover with soil or mulch to keep from blowing away.
I hope you enjoy the process of creating this healthy, rich soil amendment from scraps. Using compost worms is very easy, the process a wonderful way to dispose of garbage, and a great way to create compost, it is a beautiful dark soil conditioner that will help feed and nurture your plants.
References
Cheap & Easy Worm bin. http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/Easywormbin.htm.
Cornell Composting http://compost.css.cornell.edu/worms/steps.html
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