By JoAnne Skelly — To do yard work when it’s hot, I try to work in the shade. For example, I spent the cooler hours this morning removing dying leaves from irises and pruning out watersprouts and suckers in a crabapple and Amur maple. The previous two days I dug grass out of a flower bed, always sitting or kneeling in the shade.
I had tried spraying another flower bed with a grass specific weed killer rather than digging it out, but it took over six weeks to kill the grass. Then, I still had to cut the dead stuff out.
This time I wanted instant results, so hand digging it was. Because the grass is growing among irises, blanket flowers, phlox and catmint, I used a sharp, pointed trowel instead of a shovel. While time consuming, it is rewarding when the bed looks clean and turned over the same day.
As a temporary deterrent, I dumped a container of cayenne pepper and a bowl of coffee grounds down a hole dug next to our foundation by a ground squirrel. I then put rocks and bricks into the hole and covered it over with soil. On top of that I dumped another container of cayenne pepper. I need to cut and lay chicken wire along the base of the house and cover that with soil and rocks, for a more permanent solution. The cayenne and coffee grounds seemed to work when squirrels dug under the garage. I will also put a couple of children’s pinwheels near the area to hopefully scare the dang critter away.
Fortunately, the critter problem hasn’t been like last year. If you remember, I had hundreds of vole (meadow mice) holes and tunnels throughout the yard. No voles this year, thank goodness. The bunny population is also almost nonexistent. There is a family of four teenage coyotes living in our creek as well as fledging hawks in our trees. Perhaps they are keeping critter populations in check.
I’m also having a problem with thrips or something damaging the leaves of a cucumber plant and a lantana. I checked to see if the cucumber had squash bugs, since it’s in the squash family, but it doesn’t. And since the lantana has the same trouble, I suspect thrips or mites. The damage is white speckles that create sickly leaves reducing plant vigor. I’m not sure what to do, so I will have to research it.
Aren’t you glad you are a gardener? You will never be bored!
— JoAnne Skelly is Associate Professor & Extension Educator, Emerita at University of Nevada Cooperative Extension skellyj@unr.edu.
