worms

Small little caterpillars are eating bougainvillea leaves as fast as they can sprout. Years ago nothing bothered a bougainvillea. Now it seems to be a constant battle. There are a couple of options you can do to help control them. Spray with organic Thuricide which only kills worms and caterpillars. You will need to reapply every week or two to keep them looking pretty and to stop the cycle. Another alternative is to drench the soil with Bayer Tree and Shrub Protect and Feed. This works systemically to prevent and to kill insects for up to 9 months. It is also labeled for containers.

–DeAnna

Webbing on tree bark, white stuff on plants, & what’s cutting circles in my leaves?

Bark Lice: Good

We get lots of calls about webbing on tree trunks this time of year. These are good bugs called bark lice. They create a protective webbing around their colony and go to work cleaning the bark of your trees. Do Not Spray. These beneficial insects help maintain your trees’ health…absolutely free!

Image c/o Texas A&M Agrilife

Mealy Bugs: Bad

White cottony clumps on tips, stems, and undersides of leaves in summer are most likely mealy bugs! They are bad bugs. People often think these are a fungus because of their appearance but one squish with your fingers will tell you they’re insects feeding on your plants. They especially love Hibiscus, Jatropha and some Salvias. Treat naturally with Safer Insect Killing Soap or Neem Oil during cooler evening hours. You can also spray Broad Spectrum Insecticide which controls mealy bugs and other nuisance insects. Always follow label directions.

Leafcutter Bees: Good

Surprise! Your plant has bees, not worms, cutting circles in their leaves. Leafcutter bees are all the buzz in area gardens as they build their nests. These are good bees! No need to spray or treat. The female will cut leaves in perfect circular patterns from thin leaves like Roses, Crape Myrtles, and Plumbago to block their nest openings. This only lasts a couple of weeks and your plants will be just fine. Like many bees, they are passive, but they can sting if harassed or aggravated.

–Debbie

May means Mom’s Day, graduations, and more BBQs and family holidays outside! May is also Mental Health Awareness Month. As gardeners, we know growing plants and being outdoors are necessary for our wellbeing…and so much fun! Here are our Top 5 Must Do’s this May to help you and your garden make the transition to warmer weather.

Check out our May Garden Guide for more tips and remember that trees, shrubs, and perennials can be planted 12 months out of the year! The only difference is the amount of water they need depending on temperatures and wind!

1. Plant Blooming Perennials

It’s still time to plant lots of different blooming perennials. Get them established now so they are better adapted to withstand warmer temps this Summer. Staples like Esperanza, many varieties of Salvia, Jatropha, Lantana, and more are all blooming beautifully right now. We’re excited about Cape Town Honeysuckle this month (see pic above). It grows to about 4-5’ tall and wide, whereas its relative, Cape Honeysuckle, grows to 8’ or more. Lots of blooms and lots more options for placement. Added bonus: these blooming perennials attract pollinators like butterflies and hummingbirds!

2. 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 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. And remember to keep watering as the weather warms up. Soaker hoses are great to snake around your plants keeping water close to the ground and root systems.

3. Tend Your Lawn

It’s vital to water your lawn once a week unless we have rain. Invest in a sprinkler that’ll do the work – we have them. Hand watering the lawn may feel therapeutic, but you won’t get good coverage and depth.

When mowing, the proper height for St. Augustine lawns is around 3 inches. For Bermuda lawns keep mowed to around 2-2.5 inches.

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.
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.

4. Look for Thirsty Plants

Watch your plants and they will show you when they need a drink. Most show signs of wilting (see photo). That’s a sign they need water soon. Once you give them a drink, they perk up quickly. But some will not tell you until it is too late, like a live oak tree. Invest in a moisture meter. They help to read the moisture with a poke into the soil around the roots. We have them and they’re very easy to use.

5. 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 – lots of options. Or the gift that gardeners love most – plants!

Check out our May Garden Guide for more tips! Happy gardening!

Spring is here again, and as plants and flowers wake up, so do unwanted guests such as aphids and fleas. Some of the most effective ways to eliminate these pests and many others is to use beneficial bugs. We keep Ladybugs, Beneficial Nematodes, and Earthworms on hand here at Gill’s to get rid of pests and improve the health of your lawn and garden.

Ladybugs

Fun facts about Ladybugs- Ladybugs aren’t really bugs at all, they’re beetles. There are almost 400 different kinds of ladybugs in North America.

Female ladybugs can eat as many as 75 aphids in one day. They also like to eat scale, mealybugs, and spider mites.

Ladybugs smell with their feet and antennae. A ladybug’s jaws chew from side to side instead of up and down like our jaws. The color of a ladybug’s spots begin to fade as it gets older.

Ladybugs are most active when their body temperature is 75 degrees or warmer. A ladybug’s bright color warns birds that it does not taste good. When a ladybug flies, its wings beat 85 times every second. Female ladybugs are larger than male ladybugs.

Aphids are the first pest to hit in the spring and they love the new growth on plants. Buy your ladybugs now and keep them dormant in the refrigerator till your first outbreak of aphids, then release a few hundred at a time.

Use Ladybugs to help eliminate:

– Aphids
– Scale
– Mealybugs
– Spider mites

Beneficial Nematodes

Beneficial Nematodes are microscopic creatures that live in soil where they feed on the eggs and larvae of soil borne-pests. They’re voracious predators of fire ants, flea larvae, and white grub worms (the grubs that eat plant roots).

Beneficial Nematodes are the ideal organic pest control because they’re a naturally occurring predator of pests, but they don’t harm plants, animals, or people. They’re completely non-toxic and they’re easy to use.

You mix the nematodes with water, and then put the solution into a watering can or sprayer. A hose-end type sprayer is fine, as city water is fine to mix with the nematodes.

Speaking of water, beneficial nematodes do need rain or supplemental watering in order to live and reproduce in your soil, so they’re not appropriate for dry land farms or completely xeric landscapes.

Use Nematodes to help eliminate:

– Fire ants
– Fleas
– Grub worms

Earthworms

Earthworms, or Red Worms, are popular due to their many useful applications. Each Red Worm ingests its weight in organic matter every 24 hours.

They excrete a highly effective fertilizer called castings, which are high in nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, potash, and calcium, which are all great for your soil, grass, and plants!

These castings can also help repel chewing and sucking insects like aphids, whiteflies, and hard-shelled plant bugs; the chitinase (an enzyme) from the worm castings, which is absorbed by the plant, kills the bad bugs when they eat the plant leaves.

Use Earthworms and their castings for:

– Improving and aerating soil
– Fertilizer
– Starting compost
– Repelling chewing and sucking insects
– Fishing bait!

Now is a great time to get some good bugs and worms (ladybugs, beneficial nematodes, and earthworms) – before the bad bugs (aphids, fleas, mealybugs, whiteflies, fire ants, spider mites, and grub worms) arrive!

-DeAnna

Army worms are common every fall with little notice from homeowners. Rarely do they do much damage to lawns and plants but sometimes the weather is just right and they come out in huge masses. Abundant rains in August and September have aided in this year’s migration. They will eat the grass blades of your lawn and other plants, usually without any long-term damage but if their numbers are creeping you out and you’re worried about chomped up plants, you can spray with Natural Guard Spinosad or most contact insecticides like Cyonara or Mosquito Beater. Or just let nature take its course.

–Debbie Pinkerton

Did you know grubworms come from June bugs? Many folks are reporting seeing June bugs all over the porch since the first of March. They are making their mating flight to lay eggs, hatch grubs and feed off the roots of your grass. Once you begin seeing them you wait 5-6 weeks before you treat. If you have ever lost your lawn to grubs, you know the devastation they can cause. There are several ways to control grubs.

First, is the watch and monitor. If you notice sections of the lawn are prematurely wilting, or turning brown you can dig down and look for grubs. If you find more than 4 in one square foot area, then it is recommended to treat the affected areas with a granular or liquid insecticide drench.

Second, you can spray out Beneficial Nematodes. These microscopic worms attack white grubs and other soil inhabiting insects. Nematodes must be supplied with adequate moisture to help them move down into the soils where grubs are feeding. At least ¼ inch of water must be applied before and ¼ inch just after, nematodes are sprayed into the lawn. Repeat applications may be necessary to maintain a good colony of them. One container covers 2000 sq. ft.

Third, you can apply Bayer Season Long Grubworm killer which lasts for 3 months to give a chemical kill of the grubs. This product attaches to the roots of your grass and kills them as they feed. This year peak time to treat is the first two weeks of April.

-DeAnna

Floratam

Pro- Good drought tolerance, better disease tolerance, vigorous growth quick to heal damage and resist weeds

Con- Less shade tolerant than some varieties, less tolerant of some weed killers, less resistant to severe freeze (not a factor this far south), most coarse in texture

TamStar

Pro- Said to have good drought, disease, cold, and shade tolerance

Con- Very new introduction, so we don’t know for sure if these claims will pan out for us

Raleigh

Pro- Good shade, cold tolerance

Con- Poor resistance to drought, disease

Note: There is no St. Augustine resistant to grub worms, and there are situations too shady for any St. Augustine to grow. If shade might be a problem, buy one piece of grass, cut into plugs, plant, water, and fertilize carefully, and if it does not grow over spring and summer, consider flagstone paving, wood deck, shade tolerant groundcovers and shrubs, or a combination of these.

Note: Due to our cold winter, Floratam & Tamstar will be available beginning in April 2018!

-James

We have customers of all ages. Maybe two of our youngest gardeners, very active gardeners, are brother and sister Kai & Isla. Kai is a third grader and Isla a first grader, both attending Windsor Park Elementary.

It’s no surprise, they’ve grown up watching their parents and grandparents garden. And it seems they all love to experiment with what they plant, where they plant it and how they take care of it.

I asked the kids what they are thankful this Thanksgiving. Kai said he is thankful for nature and camping; Isla for being outside, NOT watching TV & NOT eating fast food!

For starters, they prefer raised beds. They use sandy loam topsoil mixed with Nature’s Blend from Gill’s and then they add compost between crops. Kai says their compost is made up of kitchen scraps (veggie peels, egg shells, strawberry tops, etc…) mixed with leaves and grass clippings.

The kids have three different growing areas in their backyard. One garden is behind the garage along the back fence where they grow veggies on a string trellis. They have a crop of green beans ready to harvest right now!

The second garden is along the side of their house where they have huge tomato plants mixed with marigolds and lots and lots of basil.

Their third garden is in the back corner where Jeff, their dad, built a L shaped raised garden. It was a gift to his wife Erika! It’s the largest garden and has the most diversity with different greens, radishes, herbs, carrots, kale, kohlrabi, pumpkin, broccoli & Bok Choy.

And to top it off, they have a big pot of beautiful fresh spearmint on their patio next to a pot of pineapple and a grow bag with potatoes they’re experimenting with!

I asked them if they liked to eat what they grow. Yes, they do! One of Isla’s favorite recipes is fresh kale from the garden mixed with olive oil, parmesan cheese, garlic and lemon. Yum! They also love simply munching on leaves while playing in the backyard!

I thought my visit was going to just be about plants, until they asked me if I wanted to see their chickens. They have four chickens, soon to be producing eggs. One of their fun pastimes is picking worms off their greens to feed their chickens!

Kai & Isla both seem to love digging in the dirt, watching veggies grow, and eating healthy food! So this Thanksgiving week, one of the many things I will give thanks for is parents that share the miracles of nature, gardening and good old healthy living with their children!

-Sally