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Gill Garden Center + Landscape Co.

Corpus Christi, TX Garden Center

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Insects

Yay for May! Everything’s growing and blooming and we hope you are too! May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which is a good time to think about the peace of mind that gardening brings us. Gardeners know that all the research is true – gardening is good for you! Here are our Top 6 Must Do’s this May to keep you and your garden feelin’ good.

1. Join Us for Garden Talks and Events!

We’ve got a fun May planned here at Gill’s, and we’re kicking it off Saturday, May 11th with our Mother’s Day Flower Art for Kids workshop! Then we’re hosting an RSVP-only pressed flower workshop the evening of May 16th, and an informative talk on setting up your own drip irrigation system on May 25th. Sure to be lots of fun and lots to learn and discuss! Click here for more info!

2. Plant Blooming Perennials and Trees

It’s still time to plant lots of different blooming perennials and blooming trees. Get them established in May so they are better adapted to withstand warmer temps this Summer. Staples like Esperanza, many varieties of Salvia, Lantana, and tons more are all blooming beautifully right now. And blooming trees like Vitex, Retama, and Wild Olive are looking great right now too. Added bonus:  these blooming perennials and trees attract lots of butterflies and hummingbirds!

3. Plant and Harvest Veggies

Warm weather veggie time! Plant peppers, zucchini, squash, and okra this month for continued harvesting into the Summer months. If you planted tomatoes, cucumbers, and other early Spring veggies, you’ll be harvesting now or very soon. Be sure to harvest often! It keeps birds & insects from finding them first. If you do have insect issues in your veggie garden, our go-to organic control is Spinosad – safe for food but takes care of bugs. Recent rain showers have been great for veggie gardens. Remember to keep watering as the weather warms up to maintain depth moisture. Soaker hoses are great to snake around your plants keeping water close to the ground and root systems.

4. Transition Your Lawn to Summer

Water deeply once every 2 weeks unless we get rain (per current watering rules). Watering once every 2 weeks with your irrigation system or sprinklers IS sufficient to keep lawns healthy through the summer. If necessary, you can supplement with hand watering. The key is to focus on depth moisture and root health – not necessarily a perfect green appearance all summer long.

When mowing, the proper height for St. Augustine lawns is around 3 inches. For Bermuda lawns, keep mowed to around 2-2.5 inches. Buzzing lawns shorter than that will cause lawn stress, and stressed lawns are more susceptible to pests, weeds, and disease.

Feed with Natural Fertilizers:  Medina Growin Green or Milorganite. These feed the lawn and the soil with great results. Water in to get them started. Plus you can use them elsewhere in your landscape for plants and trees.

Watch for lawn insects & treat when needed. Grub worms & chinch bugs are easy to control when caught early but there’s no need to treat unless you have them. Bayer Season-long Grub Control will do the trick for grubs. Cyonara takes care of chinch bugs. Reminder, you can bring us a grass sample any time you suspect a lawn disease or pest. We’ll diagnose (using our microscope if needed) and get you what you need to knock it out.

Consider reducing your lawn space! Does all this lawn stuff sound like a lot of work? It can be! Many of us are reconsidering whether we really even want all that green lawn space. Why not start converting small portions of lawn to planting beds filled with blooming perennials that benefit the environment and use far less water? One way to start would simply be to deepen existing landscape beds to reduce some lawn.

5. Set Your Mosquito Traps!

We are big fans of the simple bucket mosquito trap. Just fill a bucket 3/4 with water, add a good handful of lawn or plant clippings, and toss in a Mosquito Dunk or Mosquito Bits. These dissolve in the water and release bacteria that target mosquito larvae and kill them before they hatch. And they’re organic and not harmful to birds, bees, pets or humans! Set a few of these traps, sprinkle some organic Mosquito Beater granules around walkways and patios, spray organic Cedar Repel on your lawn, and use Skeeter Screen incense sticks near where you’re working or hanging out outside. Remember that using chemical mosquito foggers kills all the good bugs too, some of which also help control mosquitos and other bad bugs.

6. Gifts for Moms and Grads

Let us help you find something pretty, useful, or both for the gardening moms and grads in your life. Pottery, birdbaths, wind chimes, garden tools, hats, gloves, garden decor, gift cards – lots of options. Check out the Bee Puddles handmade by ceramicist and Gill’s own Wyatt Page! Help bees stop for a drink. Or find the gift that gardeners love most – plants 🙂

Visit our May Garden Guide for more tips! Happy gardening!

Mosquito Solutions: With all the recent rains, mosquitoes are here. First of all, remove any sources of standing water (that’s where they breed). For your favorite birdbath, use Mosquito Bits in the shaker,for larger ponds or ditches, Mosquito Dunks, both totally safe for birds and frogs. We have several ways to kill, control and repel them.Mosquito Beater hose-end (Permethrin) is an easy spray to killmosquitoes, ants, fleas & tics throughout the yard. It is safe to spray on all plants where mosquitoes hide. We also carry Mosquito Beater Granules which is a combination of natural essential oils to repel. It contains citronella oil, garlic, geranium oil, cedar oil and lemon grass oil. Covers 4000 sq. ft and lasts up to 3 weeks. Patio Egg Diffuser is an easy safe and effective way to help deter mosquitoes and other biting insects from your patio, porch and other outdoor living areas. It protects up to 200 sq. ft. and comes with enough refill oil to last up to 4 months.

Time To Fertilize Your Lawn, Trees & Shrubs! Use Gill Lawn and Garden for all your trees, shrubs, vines and groundcovers. Also good on your vegetable garden. Covers 6000 sq. ft. per bag. A good organic lawn fertilizer (which feeds the soil & microorganisms) is Medina Growin Green, which covers 3000 sq. ft. per bag.

Protect Your Roses: Roses are flushing with new growth, setting buds and blooming. That means aphids, thrips, black spot and powdery mildew are next. Bayer 3-in1 Insect, Disease and Mite Control works on all of these in one easy spray. Treat every 10 days to 2 weeks to maintain beautiful roses insect and disease free.Bayer Rose and Flower Care is an excellent fertilizer with systemic insecticide to keep them healthy, blooming and insect free as well. Apply this granules every 6 weeks to prevent aphids and thrips from attacking your roses. 

 
 
-DeAnna

Last week we talked about preparing the vegetable garden by pulling the leftover plants and weeds and turning in plenty of new compost. Next we need to think about what we are going to plant this fall and where in the garden we are going to plant it. Each season is a challenge to grow everything you want to with limited space. And then there’s that term crop rotation. Do I really have to? I like my tomatoes at that end of the garden.

croprotationSimply put, crop rotation is a systematic method of deciding what to plant where in your garden from one season to the next, based on plant groups. Moving plants to a new location each season improves your garden in two ways. First, it helps keep your soil healthy and fertile. Planting the same thing in the same place season after season drains the nutrients from the soil that the plant needs in order to thrive and produce big harvests. Second, rotating plant families helps manage soil-borne diseases like verticillium wilt, and soil-dwelling insects like corn rootworms or root knot nematodes. These types of diseases and pests prefer certain kinds of plants, and the longer the plants stay in the same soil, the better the chance that these enemies will show up and cause trouble.

Here are four simple families of plants to group and rotate each season:

The Tomato Family

The tomato family includes tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and potatoes. These are heavy feeders and are best planted in enriched soil. Tomato family members often are also affected by the same diseases. Never follow tomatoes after potatoes because deadly late blight can overwinter in potatoes that might have been missed and remain in the soil.

The Bean Family

These crops enrich the soil by adding a little nitrogen. This group includes green beans, green peas, and southern peas. A good gardening practice is to follow beans or peas with leafy greens such as cabbage or kale which love the nitrogen left behind by their predecessors.

The Squash Family

Squash family members are heavy feeders that grow best in rich soil also. They include summer and winter squash, pumpkins, gourds, cucumbers, and melons (including cantaloupe and watermelon).

The Cabbage Family

These leafy greens thrive on nitrogen-rich soil. Plant them where a member of the bean family has grown before. Members include cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, and turnip greens.

deannaCrop rotation is not as complicated as it sounds, especially if you take the time to sketch a garden plan and refer to the list of families. The benefits are definitely worth the effort.

-DeAnna

It seems everywhere I turn I see bugs. Chinch bugs in the grass, worms eating bougainvilleas, scale on irises and lilies, mealy bugs on tropicals.  To spray, or not to spray? That is the question. We need to raise our tolerance of what is acceptable in our landscapes. A few bugs here or there or a little plant damage is all o.k. Did you know that only about 5% of insects are bad? Many insects  are even beneficial.   This fact is the reason you must decide whether or not to spray. Lots of times nature will take care of itself if you wait a few days. Keep your plants as healthy as possible, and you will not have many insect or disease problems.

First, make sure you have the right plant in the right place, proper sun exposure, correct spacing of plants to insure air circulation, regular feeding, mulched beds, watering.  All of these things reduce stress and result in perfect growing conditions for your plants keeping  them happy and healthy. We call it IPM or Integrated Pest Management.  If you do determine you need to treat a problem insect, start with the least toxic approach.

  • Insects and disease go for the weak and stressed plants first. 
  • A few aphids can be controlled with a blast of water.
  • A cluster of mealybugs on the tips of plants can be remedied by pruning and discarding the area.
  • Using Insecticidal Soap, Neem Oil, or Thuricide sprayed on plants with insects is your next approach.
  • Never spray everything just because one plant has a problem.

deannaSo look around your yard; see what’s happening. If you’re not sure whether you have a beneficial or a problem insect, just put a sample in a ziplock bag and bring it to us. We will help identify the bug and tell you if you need a control solution.

-Deanna

Mealybugs are here! Look on the tips, stems, and undersides of the leaves for these white insects clustered together. If they go unnoticed for a short period of time , they will produce a protective cottony barrier over their bodies to protect themselves. Many times we hear “I have a white fungus on my plants”. Insecticidal Soap or Neem Oil can be used to kill these pests. Multiple applications may be needed. Thorough coverage is a must, and I usually recommend spraying once a week for 2-3 weeks to make sure you have killed them all. If you only have a few clusters of themdeanna at the tips of your plants you could smash them with your fingers and rinse, or cut off the affected tips and throw away the bugs in a sealed bag. Be a bug scout. Keep your eyes open and search. These pests usually last most of the summer.

-DeAnna

Organic Insecticide: Insecticidal Soap is based on potassium fatty acids and is used to control many plant pests. Because insecticidal soap only works on direct contact with the pests, it is important to thoroughly spray the entire area of the plant where you see the pests. It is used to kill aphids, scales, whitefly, mealybugs and spider mites.

Some plants can be sensitive to it, so be sure and read the label before spraying. (You should spray a small part of the plant, wait a couple of days to see if there is any reaction before you spray the entire plant.) It also cannot be sprayed when the temperatures are above 90 degrees. I usually recommend to spray in the early evening once the plants are in the shade. This gives them all night to dry before the sun hits them the next day. The same is true for Neem Oil. It works to kill and repel a wide variety of insects.

It also can be used as a fungicide and miticide. Neem Oil is not known to be harmful to mammals, birds, earthworms or some beneficial insects such as butterflies, honeybees and ladybugs if it is not concentrated directly into their area of habitat or on their food source. Spinosad is another insecticide used to kill deannaborers, bagworms, caterpillars, leafminers, thrips, fleas , scales and beetles to name a few.

It is also available in a granular bait form to kill fire ants. And lastly Diatomaceaous Earth. This is a powder used to scratch the exoskeleton of insects causing them to dehydrate and die. Works on roaches, fleas, pill bugs, ants and more. Depending on what insects you are trying to control, we can help you find the best product to meet your needs.

-DeAnna

With all the recent rains, mosquitoes are here. First of all, remove any sources of standing water (that’s where they breed). For your favorite birdbath, use Mosquito Bits in the shaker,for larger ponds or ditches, Mosquito Dunks, both totally safe for birds and frogs. We have several ways to kill, control and repel them.Mosquito Beater hose-end (Permethrin) is an easy spray to killmosquitoes, ants, fleas & tics throughout the yard. It is safe to spray on all plants where mosquitoes hide. We also carry Mosquito Beater Granules which is a combination of natural essential oils to repel. It contains citronella oil, garlic, geranium oil, cedar oil and lemon grass oil. Covers 4000 sq. ft and lasts up to 3 weeks. Patio Egg Diffuser is an easy safe and effective way to help deter mosquitoes and other biting insects from your patio, porch and other outdoor living areas. It protects up to 200 sq. ft. and comes with enough refill oil to last up to 4 months.

You may have already done several items on this list, but with all the recent rains they may have been depleted or washed away, therefore another application may be necessary.

  1. Fertilize the lawn, shrubs, trees and tropicals again with Gill Lawn & Garden or Milorganite.
  2. Continue to feed vegetables and herbs with Espoma Plant Tone. Citrus and fruit trees with Espoma Citrus Tone.
  3. Apply pre-emergent again to prevent weeds, Amaze or Dimension.
  4. Spray post-emergent again or as needed to kill existing weeds, Weed b gon or Image. You could also keep the weeds mowed before they go to seed. Most will die with the heat.
  5. Drench Hackberry trees for wooly aphids, bougainvillea for caterpillars, hibiscus and jatropha for mealybugs etc.. with Bayer Protect and Feed to prevent insects for 9 months.
  6. Treat the lawn with Bayer Season Long Grub Control or Beneficial Nematodes.
  7. Watch for Chinch bug activity in the hot dry spots of the lawn near sidewalks and driveways. Spray with Cyonara or Triazicide. For organic control use Spinosad or Diatomaceous Earth.
  8. Treat for fungus. Check the lawn for brown patch. Roses, Crape Myrtles and Gerbera Daisies for powdery mildew and Plumeria for rust. Use F-stop, Serenade or Actinovate for the lawn and Fertilome Systemic , Serenade or Actinovate for plants.
  9. Plant sun or shade loving heat tolerant flowers and tropicals.deanna
  10. Mulch everything including potted plants to prevent weeds and hold moisture for the summer.

-DeAnna

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