A Few Summer Tips – Webbing On Your Trees?

A Few Summer Tips

• If your watering hose is in the sun, make sure to let the water run through for a little while before watering your plants. Hot hoses make for hot water!
• Caladiums last longer if you pinch off the bloom stalks, which are always great for bouquets.
• If your tomatoes or cucumbers remind you of Jack and the Beanstalk, use Takiron stakes and jute twine to lengthen your cage and keep those veggies contained.
• You CAN give perennials a haircut in the summertime if you need to, but please nothing too drastic. Shearing blooms and gentle pruning are great ways to keep perennials looking fresh.
• Weeds love to encroach on your garden beds in the summer. Walk your beds once a week! Pulling up small weeds now is always easier, and can save you a lot of sweat. 
• If you have to spray insecticides or fungicides, do in early in the morning or late afternoon, not in the middle of the day! Water droplets have this nasty little habit of acting like magnifying glasses in 90 degree weather, and can cause burns.

-Marta

Got webbing on your trees?

It is not webworms! Webbing on the bark of trunks and branches is a good thing. Don’t spray!! Bark lice is natures clean-up crew. These tiny creatures are scouring the bark for plant, animal, or fungus life which they eat, and while they perform this housekeeping chore, they spin this web for protection. Usually the web will disintegrate in two or three days and will disappear almost a suddenly as it appeared. Leave them alone and let them do their job of cleaning up your trees or shrubs. Thank goodness for good bugs!

-DeAnna