This Week's Gardening...
Crepe myrtles are great trees. They have gorgeous flowers and, when fully bloomed, look like a giant living cotton candy on a stick. They go deciduous in the winter, protecting themselves from the cold, and can stand extreme heat in the summer. In fact, they thrive on it.
While our other plants wilted and browned during this summer's most intense heat (120 degrees plus), the crepe myrtle just laughed it off and produced some more flowers.
The one drawback to them is that they're a prolific producer of suckers...stems growing from the ground around the bottom of the plant.
If you want yours to be a bush, rather than a tree, no problem. Just leave them be. But, if you're like me and want to train it into a tree, you need to get those suckers.
If left alone, you'd get a tree like this one at our local YMCA, where the suckers grow like a little bush around the bottom of the trunk.
Otherwise, you just need to go out once a week with your pruning shears and snip them off at the base.
It's not a hard job but you need to keep on top of it.
In other gardening news, I found a cluster of grapes on our vine that somehow survived that intense heat and was able to harvest it.
We're blowing out our classic vinyl LP albums at The Musick Channel Garage Sale on Ebay.Find some bargains on great music today.
Darryl MusickCopyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved
Chores this week: deadhead roses, trim back citrus trees growing into walkway, pull weeds.
No, I don't actually hunt them but it is tempting sometimes.
Actually, I love living in an area where we get to mingle with wildlife. Deer, bears, rabbits, skunks, coyotes, squirrels, birds, possums, and racoons can be seen with regularity. The deer most of all.
During the drought, the deer found out they could make a much more hassle-free living by coming down out of the mountains and living at the foot of the hills behind our house. Why hunt for food when the people in the neighborhood grow all you want for free.
They found the rose gardens on our street...including the half dozen bushes in my front yard...and eat those tasty blooms before they can even open.
During my recent front yard landscape project, I also planted a dwarf nectarine tree. Guess who else likes the taste of nectarines. Well, at least the leaves and branches.
I found evidence of deer damage and put a tomato cage around the sapling. That wasn't going to work so I had to move it.
I dug up the plant.
I put it in a hole in my fenced-in backyard where I had recently removed a rotting camellia bush. Next, watered in with some vitamin B1 and done.
Now, I had a large hole in my new front yard landscape.
I went to Home Depot and bought this bright red crepe myrtle and planted it in it's place.
I already have a pink crepe myrtle about five feet away that the deer leave alone. Hopefully, they'll find this bush just as unappetizing.
Darryl MusickCopyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved
