Planting
The 2007 roses are here. This month they will begin that first bloom. And all of you rose lovers know what that first bloom is: blossoms with wonderful color and fragrance! For those of you who were waiting to select a new rose shrub until you could see the actual flower, this will be the month to stop by the garden center and stroll through the roses!

Did you know that azaleas and camellias are best planted while blooming? They began their blooming in February, so March is right in the middle of their blooming season. DON'T feed your camellias until they have completed their blooming! If you do, they will drop all remaining buds and you will be so very unhappy, thinking that you killed your shrub. Fertilize to reward the plant AFTER the blooming ends.

Spring color plants are arriving daily! Color up your gardens with perennials and annuals. Look for perennials such as campanula, columbine, coral bells, delphinium, foxglove (digitalis), diascia, penstemon, salvia, yarrow and so much more. Great annuals to pick from include celosia, coleus, dianthus, linaria, lobelia, marigolds, nicotiana, petunias, salvias, and verbena.

There is still time for planting bulbs! Tuberous begonias, caladium, calla, canna, dahlia, gladiolus, nerine, tigridia and many more are available.

Spring is a good time for planting many of our native plants. If you are in a region that still anticipates some frost, hold off until you are sure the frosty nights and mornings are finished. Think of how you are contributing to water saving if you have a garden of native plants, or even just a portion of your garden with water-wise plants.

Ladies and gentlemen: Start your vegetable gardens! Such veggies as the cabbage family (cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli), squash, lettuce, Swiss chard, peppers, and cool season tomatoes are here. This is also a good time not only to prune back herbs from last year, but also add in new plants such as chives, parsley, rosemary, sage, tarragon, and thyme.

Maintenance Duties
Fertilize your lawns with Scotts Lawn Food.

Fertilize your roses with Whitney Farms Rose & Flower Fertilizer.

Snails will be out to munch on tender, new growth. Time to purchase your favorite snail bait.

Now is the time to divide perennials such as agapanthus, callas, daylilies, rudbeckia, and daisies. Those with fuchsias can cut them back two-thirds toward the main branches. Remember to leave 2-5 leaf bud/scars for new growth.

You can begin pruning your ornamental shrubs (pittosporum, boxwood, etc.) for hedges. Wait to prune spring flowering shrubs and trees until their blooming is over.

Now is the time to apply a pre-emergent grass and weed prevention product on all of your garden beds. Following the application of the pre-emergent, re-mulching will be important.

Mulch, Mulch, and Mulch More!
We often tell you to mulch. This does not mean we want you to mound the mulch up 5 feet. It means you should continue to replenish your mulch and maintain a 2-4 inch blanket over your soil. So when you hear us singing the 'mulch' song, you'll know just what we mean!

Spring is just around the corner--or so we hope. We all look forward to spring and all the freshness, the new tender foliage, and the beautiful flowers. Even just thinking of that first bloom from the rose bushes in the garden brings happiness to our hearts and smiles to our faces. But spring brings something else to our gardens that winter has minimized. Insects.

Beginning this year, we would like you to consider a new approach to your gardens and all the living creatures that dwell there. That approach is tolerance and integrated pest management. Agriculture uses the term "agricultural entomology," which applies an economic threshold--the point when it becomes more economically necessary to save a crop than to do nothing. That point is reached only when, without action, the entire crop could not be saved. But we're talking about our gardens, where the issue is actually more aesthetic than economic.

Our gardens are living ecosystems. You are probably unaware of much of that ecosystem , but it is integral and important, nonetheless. Use of pesticides is an escalation to the maximum sentence for an insect that is considered a pest. That pesticide may kill your pest, but it will also kill beneficial insects indiscriminately. And some of those beneficial insects are actually predators for the very pest you are targeting. Unfortunately, pesticides kill them all. So find out who your garden friends are, discover what they like to live on, breed on and feed upon. Add those plants to your garden, offering a welcome mat to the beneficial insects--and observe the decrease in the pest population, right before your eyes. There are many beneficial insects in your gardens. Ladybugs and their larvae are common, and so are the green lacewing larvae. Today, learn a new approach to the rose slug. He'll be in our gardens before we know it, if he isn't already.

The rose slug is a sawfly larva (note - that means that its presence will be a temporary one). In your garden, this variety of sawfly, actually a tiny wasp, is one of your garden friends. Once it becomes an adult it likes to feed on other soft-bodied insects and, like the bee, acts as a pollinator. So as an adult, this insect is a beneficial one for humans. Here's the rub--its larva, the rose slug, is seemingly the rose lover's worst enemy! Or is it the rose leaf lover's worst enemy?

The American Rose Society website informs us: "Rose slugs are the immature stages of primitive wasps called sawflies. Rose slugs look more like caterpillars than slugs. They are not slimy and do not have rasping mouthparts like true slugs. The young larva begins feeding as a skeletonizer on the underside of the leaves and as it matures, it chews large holes on the leaves."

Recommended control: rose slugs look like caterpillars but they are not; consequently insecticides for caterpillars, such as Bacillus thuringiensis, will not kill them. If there are only a few rose bushes infested with the rose slugs, pull the leaves off and kill any larvae found on the upper or lower surfaces of the leaves.

Just about any contact insecticide labeled for use on roses will kill the rose slugs. Try to use the least toxic one possible, because you don't want to kill beneficial insects in your garden. Spray oil products such as Green Light Rose Defense are the least toxic, but still effective when sprayed directly onto the rose slug. You should also spray the soil under the rose bushes, as the larvae pupate in the soil prior to overwintering. If the damage is very widespread, chemical control may be indicated. We recommend Bayer All-In One Rose and Flower Care.

Every year, we all face a "crop" of rose slugs in our rose gardens. Spring will soon be upon us, and only time will tell what this year brings us. Many of us are huge rose lovers and have many shrubs and climbers in our gardens. But one comment we would like to make to those of you who are "zero tolerant" of the little guy chewing at your rose leaves...most of us aren't growing the rose for its leaf. We don't cut the rose from the bush, throw out the rose and rose buds, and put the leafy cane into a vase. Your rose shrub will be able to continue to photosynthesize with fewer leaves, or leaves with holes. Keep this in mind when you are making a decision about the IPM (Integrated Pest Management) level of rose slug control in your gardens. Remember that the adult sawfly is a beneficial insect.

This was a strange winter for some of us in our gardens. For people accustomed to frost, this article won't have anything new. But there are a great number of us in zones that may get a frost or two from time to time, but not on an almost daily basis.

Frost damage to plants is much like desiccation from lack of water. We described this in our previous article on frost. Freezing temperatures severely dehydrate plant tissues. Water in the plant tissue freezes and expands the plant's cells, causing irreparable damage. It is only when the temperature rises that the damage to your plant becomes apparent. A 'burned' appearance may show at the top of the plant on the highest leaves (or the leaves most exposed to the freezing temperature), working its way down the stem and on through to the lower leaves. This 'burn' did not manifest itself immediately, but certainly did within a day or so.

Ok, soon we will be past the possibility of any more frosty mornings. You have a number of plants in your garden that looked like they have died - or should have. What do you do to help your poor, pathetic-looking plants? What we first would recommend is that you WATCH them. As our temperatures warm, look to see if new leaf buds are emerging. In all likelihood, there will be new growth. This is why: although there may be soft-tissue (foliage) damage to your plants, the soil probably never froze, and the roots are just fine. Keep that in mind; the plant will begin to tell itself "Ouch - I've lost my foliage cover and food-producing tissues. I'd better start growing again!" Such plants may simply re-foliate and will look beautiful again in the spring.

There may be other plants in your garden with additional damage into the branches, beyond just the foliage. These plants will send messages from the leaf bud areas in the non-damaged regions of the branches to begin growing new foliage. It is when this growth begins that you will breathe a sigh of relief AND only then will the plant tell you what to do next. Right. When you begin to see new foliage and perhaps even new small branching, the plant is telling you, "Please cut my frost-ruined branch back to just in front of the new growth." And that is exactly how you will prune.

Some of your plants may take a while to rebound from all of this damage. Watch the foliage for rotting. If you are convinced that the possibility of frost is in the past, then consider removing the dead foliage from the branches to prevent further unhealthy damage to your plants from the rotting foliage. Wait for new leaves or branching before pruning back damaged branches from these plants.

As you begin to see the new spring growth, remember to feed all your plants with Farms All Purpose Fertilizer. Their first order of business this year will be to grow new foliage. Flowering, if it's a flowering plant, will come later.

Now there may be some plants that just took too hard a hit with the frost and cannot recover, or cannot recover in an aesthetic manner. Thank those plants for their ongoing worthiness in your garden. Then come to the garden center and find a new member for your garden. If you need help, we're here for you to offer sympathy, support, and future plant selection suggestions.