April Showers Mean June Slugs

Well, March came in like a cold, wet duck. It looks like April also will be on the cool and wet side, and that will be a nice change from the past few years, when we’ve had dry springs that have made it challenging to get things started.But as we begin to garden in earnest, or try to, I’ll still advise you to curb your enthusiasm, as most of our annuals and vegetables hate cool and wet soils. So, onward, mole and mouse; forward, deer and turkey; flower away, dandelions and chickweed. It’s time to get going—and this is the April ramble.

If you think it’s too soon to take care of insect problems, think again. At the end of March, we went to inspect the Brussels sprouts that had overwintered (fine, thank you), and on the underside of the foliage were mature and active whiteflies (probably the cabbage whitefly) and aphids. A surprise for sure, but we gave them a shot of pyrethrum and canola oil.

Knocking down insect outbreaks like this early in the season means fewer issues later on. Leave them be, and they multiply and get out of control in just a few weeks. Remember, spray both sides of the foliage!

Remember how dry it was last summer? Garden centers ran out of hoses and sprinklers. But for some of us, it really didn’t matter, because our wells were running out of water. And while it certainly looks like the drought may be over, you may want to pick up some watering tools long before June. I’ve spent hours researching hoses this winter, and I’ve priced them from Albany to Southampton. I’ll have more to say about hoses in a few weeks, but if you need a quick suggestion then I’d say buy the Gilmour brand that’s labeled “heavy duty.”

I’ve also been doing lots of work looking into fertilizers both for the lawn and the garden. This has become even more confusing, because back in the days when there were only chemical and organic, you just chose one or the other. But now you can find chemical, natural and organic. To make it even more complex, the organic brands have found various marketing tools, and from one brand to the other you can find that marketers have added extra bacteria, other microbes and mycorrhizal fungi in the hope that you’ll pay the extra price for these sometimes questionable additions. More on this coming also.

But what won’t wait a couple of weeks is your landscaper or gardener, who just waited all winter for the legal April 1 date so they can start applying fertilizer to your lawn. Tie them up, stand in their way and in any way possible try to get them to hold off on putting fertilizer on your lawn! Yes, if they use a chemical fertilizer it will green up faster, but that does not equate to making your lawn healthier or better. It makes YOU feel better, but not your lawn.

See if they’ll hold off until late April—better yet, May. And if they tell you that you need four or five applications of fertilizer a year then it may be time to find someone else. You can get by with two, three applications at the most. No lawn should be getting more than two and a half pounds of total nitrogen per 1,000 square feet per year, and probably even less if you or they recycle the clippings by using mulching blades.

Then they’ll tell you that the fertilizer has to go down early, because they have to put down fertilizer and weed control at the same time. Well, maybe … it does save a step and some money (and their time, so they can move on to the next client), but if your lawn is a chemical lawn, there are new fertilizers with weed control included that don’t have to go down before the crabgrass germinates. Some can be applied up to two or three weeks later than earlier generations of pre-emergents. This gets the fertilizer down later and, as noted above, this is much better for the grass plants.

And then there are the other weeds. The one invasive weed that will come up in your beds and at the woods’ edge is the invasive garlic mustard. At this point, garlic mustard is just foliage, and the plants are only about 3 to 4 inches tall. They are easily pulled, and if yanked now they cannot set seed—that can mean fewer of these next year. I’ve been fastidious about pulling this plant out of my beds for the past four or five years, and each year I have fewer and fewer.

But now is the time to pull. Wait until they’ve flowered and set seed, and you’re doomed once again. Pull a plant up that has seed pods on it, and the seeds will still ripen and mature, then fly out up to 10 feet away, only to germinate and pester you once again. Pull now.

Dandelions are the other biggie. I use a simple tool to pop out this weed as soon as I see it. If you don’t let the flowers develop, you can reduce the re-occurrences dramatically—unless you’ve got a neighbor like mine, who lets his grass grow so tall it can’t be mowed, and the dandelions thrive. In some cases like this, you may want to use a chemical broadleaf weed killer, but these are best used in the fall. The fall application kills the plants so they can’t return and flower the next spring.

So, here, I think the best practice is to mechanically remove the plants in the spring but spray any that remain in the fall. Another compromise is to use a herbicide that has a foam action. This limits where the herbicide goes and gives you better target accuracy. It’s great for minor outbreaks but not at all cost effective for a whole lawn.

This is also the time to control Oriental bittersweet. This vine is a slow and painful killer that will bring down huge trees with its rapidly climbing tendrils. It’s so sad to see how towns, villages and the State Department of Transportation have let this get out of hand, but on our own properties there’s no excuse for not cutting the vine and ending its sprawl.

You may need to cut the vine more than once if it re-emerges, but if you cut it in the spring, chances are it won’t produce berries for another year. And if you like the plant and its berries then you can plant the native American bittersweet. It’s not invasive, much shorter and you still get the great red berries.

Be mindful of your mulch. I see mulches being over-applied everywhere and for every purpose. An inch or two of black mulch is plenty to retain moisture, cool the soil and inhibit weeds. But if that mulch builds up year after year after year, you are simply causing more problems that will doom azaleas, rhododendrons, many shade trees and more.

Lastly, back to the weather. If the season remains damp and then turns warm, it will be a banner year for slugs. Mulches also encourage slugs, as it hides them well, keeping them cool and moist and providing lots of opportunity for them to deposit their eggs.

At the first sign of slugs, start baiting, especially in the vegetable garden. You don’t need to use chemicals, but non-chemical baits need to be replaced more often. Yes, coffee grinds works, and so does beer. Just be careful of those decaffeinated and drunk slugs as you walk by.

Keep growing!