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Living Green |
Recipe for Pickling Marchant or other Wax Peppers |
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Controlling Rose Chafer Beetles (Macrodactylus subspinosus) |
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How Mulch ? By Thomas J. Lee Mulching is a simple, water and labor saving addition to any garden whether it be a vegetable garden or your perennial bed. It will prevent your garden from drying out too fast, thus reducing the water it needs, and will prevent weeds from consuming your garden. Mulching is replicating the graceful process of nature in the fall, where the trees lay a fresh blanket of leaves to cover and protect the soil. One can mulch an existing flowerbed, a vegetable garden, or an area that will remain fallow for the season to help build the soil. Two basic types are mulching as a top dressing, and sheet mulching. Mulching as a top dressing is an excellent way to add nutrients to your soil and give the ground a nice even appearance. Sheet mulching makes a thicker layer and is a good way to block out weeds and build new layers of soil. Both are easy to do and are very beneficial for the health of your garden soil. How Much one might ask, well I’ll tell you just how to mulch. What you will need; compost (such as Bumpercrop or Black Forest compost) newspaper or cardboard, and straw, or grass clippings.
MULCHING AS A TOP DRESSING
1.) Simply spread some compost, or decomposed forest humus on the ground.
SHEET MULCHING
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Basic Rules:
You can use white or whatever you like .
Rose chafers are commonly found in many areas,
particularly those with sandy soil. They
are pests living on many different types of flowers,
fruits, trees and shrubs but they are especially
damaging to young developing rosebuds, grapes, and cherries.
An adult rose chafer is a moderate-sized beetle,
1/3 to 3/4 of an inch long, with wing covers
having small yellowish hairs. It's slender
and can be pale green to tan in color with
reddish-brown or orange spiny legs. Its
body is black on the underside. The Larvae
are small white grubs with a brown head that
are found in the soil.
Rose chafer will larvae over winter in the soil
and pupate in the spring. Adults emerge
in late May to early June. Because the
rose chafer beetle prefers sandy soil to lay its
eggs, plants located on sandy sites are the most
likely to be attacked. Adult beetles feed
on plants for three or four weeks, generally
until late June. Females lay eggs in
groups of 6 to 25 in the soil among the weeds
and grasses until early July, then die shortly
afterwards. The eggs hatch in about
two weeks, and newborn larvae feed on the
roots until fall, then burrow deeper into
the soil to spend the winter below the frost
line. The following spring they pupate,
then emerge as adult beetles. There is
one generation a year.
Rose chafer feed on the foliage of many trees,
shrubs, also blackberry, grape, raspberry,
strawberry, and tree fruit such as apple,
and cherry. Also garden vegetables,
and ornamentals like birch, dahlia, hollyhock,
iris, peony, poppy and rose. Adult rose
chafers chew on flowers, especially roses and
peonies, causing large, irregular holes by
eating the leaf tissue between the large veins.
This type of plant injury is known as skeletonizing.
They also chew on the leaves and fruits, but are
usually damaging only when exceptionally numerous.
Damage is more severe in areas with sandy soil.
Larvae feed on the roots of grass and weeds doing little
noticeable damage.
Control:
When packing and sending your packages, a few simple practices
will help you reduce waste and save money.
Reuse your bubble wrap and packing peanuts if you have them,
or create waste free filler by running paper shopping bags
through a
strip-cut shredder
to create long strips that will
cushion your shipments and then can be easily reused or recycled.
You can also shred old calendars, old catalogs, and even
phonebooks.
