Welcome to our July edition of Bennett Garden and Gift Center News.  I have to begin by saying, what a crazy spring and even crazier summer we’ve had so far!  The weather has been “interesting”, to say the least, and has certainly kept us guessing from day to day, hasn’t it?  It has also created a wide range of garden issues that many of us haven’t seen in quite some time, if ever.  In putting this edition of our newsletter together I tried to focus on some of those problems and situations that many of you have been asking and calling about. I hope you find the articles informative and helpful. 

Last month we carried a piece on Japanese Beetles.  You might want to refresh your memory on that one since they have arrived and seem to be eating everything in sight!  We have some great products, organic and chemical, that we have been using and suggesting with great success.  Call or stop by if you need some help or advice!

Be sure and check out our current sales and specials this month.  We have some great deals on plants, garden accessories, and home décor that you won’t want to miss!  There are also two coupons in this issue (I promised coupons!) to consider – choices are great, aren’t they!  Also, be sure to check our website for updated specials and coupons.  I’m trying my best to rotate these every couple of weeks. 

And, as always I just want to say thank you for your continued support.  I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, Bennett Garden & Gift Center could not exist without you.  You have become not just our customers, but our friends and we really do value that.  So, stay cool, enjoy the rest of your summer, and we hope to see you soon.

As always,
Bonnie

If you have an herb garden you know what a great pleasure it is to have access to your own home-grown herbs--ones that are exactly to your taste, rather than a generic supermarket blend.  Drying or freezing some of your herbs can give you that pleasure year-round.  Along with the taste advantage, your own herbs are much, much cheaper.

The method of preparing herbs for storage that gives you the best flavor and fragrance is air-drying.  But if you don't have a warm, dry area that is suitable, or you have herbs that aren't suited for air-drying, don't despair!  There are other methods that work almost as well.

Natural Air-drying:
Sturdy, low-moisture herbs are best suited for air-drying. Some examples are: bay leaves, dill, oregano, marjoram, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. This method is also effective for large batches of herbs.  Basil, lemon balm, and most mints have high moisture content--these can mold if not dried quickly.

• Air-Dry Method 1
  Cut large stems/branches from mature plants. Shake them to get rid of any insects, then remove any damaged leaves.
  
  Rinse them with cool water and gently pat them dry with towels or paper towels. Turn the branches upside down and take off some of the leaves along the lower stem (the top, after you've turned them upside down). Gather five or six branches together in a bunch.
  
  Get a large paper bag and make several holes in it for ventilation. Put the bunch upside down inside the bag, gather the opening around the leafless stem ends, and tie securely. The bag will protect the bunch from dust and other pollutants. (You can skip the bag if drying for sachets - but keep them away from direct sunlight; that will tend to reduce the fragrance.)
  
  Hang the bag in a warm airy place and leave it alone for several weeks.
  
  When the leaves are dry, check for any signs of mold growth; if you find mold, discard the whole bunch! If the bunch is clean, strip the leaves off of the stems and toss the stems. Store the whole leaves in small airtight containers (plastic 'zip' bags are great). Label them and store them in a cool, dry, dark place.
  
  

• Air-Dry Method 2:
  The second way to dry herbs is to spread them out to dry. With fine-leafed herbs such as oregano and thyme, simply remove the foliage from stems and spread the leaves on a cookie sheet or piece of clean window screen and set in a warm, dry, airy place away from direct sun. Stir them up every few days to turn them over. Once the leaves feel crisp, you can store them in an airtight container for later use.

Drying in an Oven:
This works well for herbs that tend to mold if not dried quickly--but can also be used if you don't have a warm, dry, well-ventilated (and convenient) place to hang herbs.

For oven-drying, heat the oven to a low heat (150-200F), place the herbs on a baking sheet in the oven, keep the oven door open and bake the herbs until they are dry. This will take several hours, maybe longer if you are drying high-moisture herbs. Keep an eye on them--you want them dried, not burned!

Some people dry herbs in the microwave--we don't advise that, as it takes out a lot of the flavor and fragrance. If you must dry this way, put about 4 branches in the oven between paper towels. Heat for a minute or two on high. If the herbs are not brittle and dry when removed from the oven, repeat for 30 seconds more each time until dry.

Freezing Herbs:
Don't freeze herbs to use as garnish--they become limp and unsightly. Some herbs that freeze well: basil, borage, chives, dill, lemongrass, mint, oregano, sage, savory, sorrel, tarragon, and thyme.

If they are to be used in soups or stews, you can do a quick and handy freeze in an ice cube tray. Chop up the leaves and put a teaspoon of the herb in each section. Fill with water and put the tray in the freezer. To use, simply remove the pre-measured herb in the ice cube, and drop as many as you need in your soup or stew.

You can also simply put a few bunches in a freezer bag or other container and put them in the freezer.

With summer here, garden herbs are kicking into high gear, producing lots of pleasing, aromatic foliage that is great for cooking and potpourris. Freshly harvested leaves are wonderful for cooking, but you might want to preserve some to use later in the year or to create sachets that will fill your home with wonderful scents.

Stop Pruning!
You should stop pruning shrubs and trees now and not begin again until the leaves drop. Remember that pruning stimulates new growth and continuing it at this point in the growing season will encourage growth that may not have a chance to strengthen or “harden off’ before winter. Now is the time to be deadheading perennials and annual flowers.

Be on the Lookout for Japanese Beetles
Have you ever seen a Japanese Beetle? It’s a lovely creature, metallic green-bronze in color--don’t let their looks deceive you, they may be lovely to look at, but devastating to your plants! You will usually see them in clusters or pairs on the upper sides of leaves on plants that love the sun. They will chew on the leaves until they have a lacey appearance. Control is important--pick them off and drop into soapy water, or stop by the garden center and pick up one of our organic or chemical products to take care of them.

Weed Be Gone!
Keep up with the weeds. They will rob your flowers and vegetables of moisture and nutrients. So brave the weather, defend against the mosquitoes, and pull those weeds!

Prevent Disease on Hostas
Monitor your hostas for large, irregular spots with dark borders, better known as anthracnose (a type of fungus). Eventually the centers of the spots will fall out, leaving the hosta leaves with holes, much like slug damage. Try to keep the leaves as dry as possible, and thin out plants when you can to improve air circulation.

Houseplant Vacation!
If you haven’t yet, take your sun-loving houseplants outside for a summer vacation. Start them in a shady area to slowly acclimate them to the great outdoors. Keep them sheltered from the wind, and water them often. This “vacation” helps to stimulate new growth.

And What About Mulch?
Maintain 2 to 3 inches of mulch around your plants to conserve soil moisture, maintain a cool soil temperature, and help retard weed growth. Materials such as wood chips, straw, or dry grass clippings make good mulches. More decorative materials such as shredded hardwood bark can also be used.

Watch Your Tomatoes
Leaf diseases can become a problem for your tomatoes when the weather is wet and humid for extended periods of time. These fungal diseases are spread by disease spores in the soil that splash up on the leaves after rain, or sometimes with watering. To reduce the spread of infection cage your tomatoes for better air circulation, mulch to prevent splashing, and remove and destroy infected leaves.

And Speaking of Tomatoes…
Now is also the time to be watching for blossom end rot. This is the condition that causes black sunken patches on the bottoms of the tomato. It is best to keep the soil evenly moist as the tomato ripens and develops. Mulching the soil and watering as needed during dry conditions can help prevent this problem. If your tomatoes do develop blossom end rot, stop in and see us--we can help!

For a more detailed, day by day listing of gardening tips check out the University of Illinois Extension Service website. You can find a link under the “Resource Links” section of our home page. 

We all have been thrilled by the Queen of the Garden this spring; the first rose bloom has been absolutely fabulous. If you haven't been by the garden center and wandered through the rows of hybrid teas, floribundas, English, Romantica, tree roses and climbers, we invite you to do so. The color palette and fragrant bouquet is out of this world.

First, a note on summer planting: there are those that think rose planting season is over by now. After all, it's past the first of June; aren't they supposed to be planted in cold weather at bare root season? Nonsense. You can plant roses in the summer!

Almost everyone loves roses but many people don't grow them because they think roses are difficult to care for. Not so. They do require some care, but new resistant varieties are much easier to care for than the roses our grandparents grew. Following are the basic care tips for growing this Queen of the Garden.

Here are a few tips for hot weather planting: Always make sure the rose is well watered before planting; never plant (or fertilize) a dry or wilted plant. Provide lots of water after planting. It's a good idea to trim back some of the top growth so the roots don't have to work so hard. You can safely take off about 1/3 of the top growth. Use lots of planting mix and save some for a top dressing of mulch to help keep the roots cool.

Roses perform best in bright sunny areas. Choose a location where access for pruning and maintenance is easy and where the plant is not likely to be exposed to too much overhead watering, (such as lawn sprinklers) which could result in continual mildew problems. 
 
Planting: Once you have chosen a location, plant your rose carefully to ensure a healthy start. Use a quality soil mix to blend 50/50 with your existing soil. Dig a hole 1.5 times as big as the container size you are planting. Use your soil blend in the bottom and handle the root ball carefully, using two hands to place it inside the hole. Next, using your soil blend, fill in around the sides of the root ball. Water the root ball thoroughly and let the soil settle naturally. Remember to water daily, as the rose gets established. You can begin fertilizing in 2-3 weeks.

Once the first blooms fade, what is your next step? Deadhead, water, fertilize and mulch. Pretty darn simple.  
 
Deadhead: This encourages your rose to grow more secondary canes that will give you the next bloom cycle.  Make your cuts just above (1/4") an outward facing 5-leaflet. How far down the cane? That is your choice. During the bud/bloom time, some cut long stems to take into the house. Others cut back to shape and maintain a certain size to the rose bush throughout the season. Cut off cross canes and any canes coming up from below the graft union (those are suckers from the root stock). 
 
Water: Roses love water. Keep the soil moist but not with standing water. 
 
Fertilize: Roses love to eat; wouldn't you after all the work of producing these blooms? (Just a quick product note: If you use a systemic food with pesticides, it will kill not only rose pests, but beneficial insects as well.) 
 
Mulch: Cover the soil with 2-3 inches of mulch (cocoa mulch, small or shredded bark) surrounding the rose bush. Keep mulch away from the main stem/graft area. Mulch will keep weeds down, moisture in the soil, and increase the health of your soil.

Keep an eye out for the following pests:

Aphids: Tiny insects found on the tips of new growth and buds.

Bristly rose slug: This larva of the sawfly is found on the underside of the leaves. It eats leaf tissue, leaving a lace effect. It's not hard to control, but will do a lot of damage if ignored.

Thrips: Tiny insects found on the inside of flowers, thrips cause distorted and stunted blossoms. They usually show up at the end of summer.

Powdery mildew: A fungal disease that looks like white dust on the leaves.

Rust: A fungal disease that looks like orange powder on the backs of the leaves. Avoid watering late in the day to help prevent fungal problems.

Neem oil and narrow range oil will take care of most problems. It's good to have some on hand to catch problems early.

There is a wealth of information available on rose care. By following the simple basics discussed here, even the beginning gardener should be able to enjoy roses. Just remember: lots of sunshine, lots of water and regular feeding.

We look forward to strolling with you through the rose section of our garden center and helping you with the best selection of roses for your garden. 

Click for printable coupon.

There truly is nothing new on the earth.  Take mulch, for instance.  As long as leaves fall off of trees, you have mulch.  Prairie grasses die and prevent weeds from coming up, and you have mulch.  We hire people to bring us yards of mulch to spread amongst our gardens every year.  Even the Egyptians used mulches.  Well, they probably didn’t call it “mulch” but the Hanging Gardens of Babylon probably would have been far less spectacular without it.

We use mulch to control weeds, to cut down on evaporation from the soil, to keep the soil warmer in the autumn and cooler in the summer, to prevent soil erosion, and to control diseases.

And yet, mulch itself is susceptible to a disgusting looking, yet relatively harmless fungus that resembles nothing so much as dog vomit.  Tapioca Slime (Brefeldia maxima) is one of the largest slime molds, resembling tapioca in its early stages-shiny, white and lumpy.  It matures to a cushion-like shape, taking on a pinkish hue or a white-yellow that eventually darkens to black.  A garden filled with partially decomposed wood mulch is Eden for Tapioca slime, also known as “dog vomit fungus.”

While somewhat disgusting in appearance, slime molds are harmless, and appear during warm to hot weather following heavy rains or watering.  Primitive organisms, they feed on decaying organic matter, hence their proclivity for our beneficial mulches.  With the overwhelming amount of rain, humidity and heat that has been our weather the past few weeks, they are even more evident than usual.

They are fairly rare in frequency, cause very little damage, but may appear in maintained turf grass as well as in our flower beds which we’ve been so assiduously responsible to mulch.  The following turfs may be affected, but aside from a little yellowing, the damage will be minimal. 

Turf

• Annual ryegrass (Italian ryegrass) (Lolium multiflorum)
• Bermudagrass (Cynodon spp.)
• Creeping bentgrass (Agrostis palustris [A. stolonifera])
• Fine fescues (Festuca spp.)
• Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis)
• Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne)
• Roughstalk bluegrass (Poa trivialis)
• Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea)

The solution to this icky problem?  Leave the slime molds alone.  They will soon disappear.  Accelerate the process by raking or mowing off the mushrooms as they appear.  Aerating the mulch will help, as will a heavy stream of water to disperse the mat. 

A nuisance, yes, but important as they make nutrients more available to plants.  Plus, they are a great conversation piece! 

Spring brings with it beautiful blossoms, fresh air, warmer temperatures . . . and bugs!  Ants, gnats, tent worms, none of which are pleasant.  Ah, but spring also gives us ladybugs and lady beetles (Hippodamia convergens), which are the best-known garden predators available.  There are nearly 5,000 different kinds of ladybugs worldwide, 400 of which live in North America.  In fact, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio and Tennessee have adopted the ladybug as their official state insect!

As legend has it, in Europe, during the Middle Ages, the crops were being destroyed by insects, so the farmers prayed to the Virgin Mary for help.  The ladybugs came, ate the pests, and saved the crops!  The grateful farmers began calling the ladybugs “The Beetles of Our Lady” which eventually morphed into “Lady Beetles.”

With aphids, mealy bugs and mites being their favorite food, ladybugs are some of our most beneficial bugs; an adult ladybug can eat over 50 aphids a day.  These small, oval-winged insects are usually red with black spots, and are less than ¼ inch in length.  As they age, the color of the spots will fade.  If a bird, the primary predator of the ladybug, threatens a ladybug, she will play dead.

Some more silly facts about this delightful and advantageous visitor to our forests, fields, gardens, and yes, even our homes:

• Ladybugs chew from side to side and not up and down like people do.
• A gallon jar will hold from 72,000 to 80,000 ladybugs.
• A female ladybug will lay more than 1000 eggs in her lifetime.
• The Asian lady beetle can live up to 2-3 years if the conditions are right.
• In Sweden, it is believed that if a ladybug lands on a young maiden’s hand, she will soon be getting married.
• In England, finding a ladybug means that you will have a good harvest.
• In France, if you are sick and a ladybug lands on you, when it flies away, it will take the sickness with it.
• If you find a ladybug in your house in the winter you will have good luck!

Get to know your beneficial insects. They can be very useful in keeping the pests away and reducing the use of chemicals. And remember--when you do need to use chemicals in your garden, read the instructions carefully and consult with one of our nursery professionals, who can advise you on the best one to use for your particular problem.  

The primary reason for keeping our tools sharp is so that the cuts they make are cleaner, allowing the plant to heal more efficiently, and resulting in a healthier plant that is better able to fight disease, insect infestation, and natural stresses. Most arborists prefer diamond files because of their ease of use, even for a novice. You’ll need three levels of coarseness, or grits: coarse, fine, and extra fine. These files, with their long life pans, will be a part of your gardening arsenal for years to come.

But let’s begin with a “bath.” First coat your tools with WD-40 or Sap-X, leaving it on for 30 seconds. Then put on heavy gloves for the remainder of the project. Take coarse steel wool or a wire brush and apply elbow grease to remove all of the dirt that’s accumulated. Be sure to clean the back of the neck as well. After the gunk is gone, switch to finer steel wool for polishing the shine back into your pruners. Take a cloth and wipe down the tool, removing the little bits of dirt and metal that your efforts have created. Now for the files. Prior to using them, pat them with a moist cloth; the water will keep the file from clogging with the tiny bits of metal you’ll be removing from the blade. Begin with the coarsest file and progress to the finest for the best edge.

Angle is all-important. You want to angle your coarsest file to the beveled edge, about 10 to 20 degrees. This is where your gloves are particularly handy; with one hand, apply some pressure to ensure that the tool doesn’t slip. The gloves will also prevent fine pieces of metal from entering your hands. Starting at the inside of the blade, draw the file away from your body and toward the tip of the blade in a curving motion, always adhering to the shape of the blade. Make anywhere from 20 to 40 passes with the file, depending on the degree of deterioration. Switch to the finer file, making the same number of passes, and finish with the extra fine file, again matching the number of passes made.

Complete the process by wiping your tool with a cloth and a lubricant. Once a year, use a product designed for lubricating bicycle chains, and intermittently throughout the season, apply olive oil to the blades.