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Ask Anne Clapp - Archives Page 24Return to Ask Anne Clapp Archives - Main Page Question: Anne, I just helped my Mom cut back a Seven Sisters Climbing rose bush..It had not been tended to and had grown with runners at least 20ft. I took some starters that had rooted in different areas. The starters have roots. My question is what is the best thing to use when I plant these starters to make sure that transplant well?? I have never had any roses and I understand that when this particular climbing rose bush blooms that it is very beautiful!! Also should I cut the shoots back close to the root to make it do better? I am full of questions but do not want to do the wrong thing. Thank you, Debra M. from Granbury, Texas Anne Clapp: The starter plants with roots need to get in the ground as quickly as possible. The planting hole should be amended with composted organic material such as finely ground pine bark or leaves and grass clippings. Add some phosphorus either in the form of bone meal or super phosphate. You will want to leave at least 12 inches of plant material on the roots to allow the plant to make food for new growth. It may be necessary to stake the plant to keep it in place until it starts growing. Keep the plant watered so the soil remains moist but not wet. Do not fertilize the new plants until you see new leaves forming. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Rubber trees cannot take any freezing weather. The rubber tree plant will have to come back inside before the first frost is predicted. The plant really does better when it is kept inside when temperatures are below 45F. They are a tropical plant and can take the Texas heat if you keep the plant watered. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: When I was housebreaking our last dog I invested in a large bag of gypsum (calcium sulphate). Farmers call the product land plaster and use it to take care of fertilizer spills. I sprinkled a little of the gypsum over the urine spots when she made them and found it worked reasonably well in keeping the lawn from spotting and dying. Watering the spots immediately also dilutes the nitrogen and will help. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The fertilizer recommended for Centipede does not contain any phosphorus. You could use it on the Bahia if you added some super-phosphate to the Bahia lawn. You never lime a centipede lawn and you lime a bahia lawn. Centipede and Bahia can grow on the same property but not in the same area because their cultural requirements are so different. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Easter lilies do well planted outdoors. They may be planted as soon as danger of frost is past. The plants will bloom next year - but not at Easter. The natural blooming time for the plants is usually in June. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Nellie Stevens holly does lose a lot of its leaves at this time of year as new growth comes out. The plants may have a fungal disease causing the black spots. You may want to spray the new foliage with a fungicide for leaf spot disease following the directions on the product you purchase. Remove all the leaves that fall from the trees and put them in the trash rather than composting them. Fertilizing with cottonseed meal does seem to improve the health of holly infected with some fungal disease. Mulching well with composted oaks leaves is also said to improve the health of the plants. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The problem is the station re-runs segments from previous years. Figs were actively growing two weeks earlier this year. The best time to prune figs is when they are completely dormant – usually late February or the first week in March. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Most of the time you can tell if the tree is still living by scraping the bark to see if there is green tissue just beneath the bark. If you did any pruning you should be able to tell if the wood is dead or living; living growth is still pliable. Trees under stress may be later breaking bud than healthy trees so you may want to wait until June to see if the tree does produce leaves. If it does not have the tree removed. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: I think some changes were made during the editing. Your math is correct. The 6 pounds came with the comment no matter what the height of the tree do not add more than 6 pounds of fertilizer. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The best time to prune a Kwanzan cherry is right after it finishes blooming. The plant blooms on wood produced during the summer so winter or early spring pruning removes many of your blooms. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: All the plants you list must be divided at least every three years for good bloom. When bulbs, corms or rhizomes are crowed too closely together they are not able to attain the size and vigor they need for good bloom. The daffodils may not have enough chill hours in late fall and early winter for bloom. There are a few cultivars of daffodils that will bloom in the south but many of them require soil temperatures in winter that are colder than you have in your area. The Stella is not a reliable repeat bloomer in the south either. They may do better with mulch to keep the soil cooler and a bit of fertilizer after their first bloom of the summer. A fertilizer high in phosphorus (the middle number) such as an 8-15-8 may help. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: I have a PhD in Textile Science and taught at the College of Textiles at NCSU. When I retired in 199I I became a master gardener with Erv Evans Wake County class. After 10,000 volunteer hours I retired from the program in 1999. When Erv started having voice problems he asked me to substitute for him on his 30 minute radio show The Weekend Gardener on WPTF radio. I was a frequent substitute until 1993 when I became the permanent Weekend Gardener. It is now a three hour show from 8 to 11 on Saturday morning at WPTF, 680am. I have taken courses in botany and horticultural science and am an accredited judge of The American Camellia Society and the National Garden Club. I am curator of the Findley Rose Garden at the JC Raulston Arboretum and have served on the Board of Advisors of the Arboretum for 20 years. I was asked to do For Your Garden when program plans for the station were made in the late winter of 2002. We filmed the first 9 episodes in February of 2002 and started airing the show at 5 minutes to the hour on Friday, Saturday and Sunday the first weekend Channel 14 was on the air. In the past year the schedule of the For Your Garden segment has become more sporadic and new segments from me are filmed on an irregular basis. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: I am facing the same problem. The plants do have a secondary leaf bud which may develop and produce foliage fairly quickly as temperatures rise again. It is a matter of wait and see what happens. If we do not have rain on a regular basis the trees are going to have to be watered once a week to encourage new growth. When new growth comes out you need to prune the plant to remove any wood that was killed by the freeze. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Most of us in the Carolinas are facing plants with dead foliage. I do not think the bark on crapemyrtles was split but I do think the early foliage was killed back. New leaves will emerge soon and the plants should bloom a bit later than they usually do. If there are dead stems on the tree they need to be pruned out as they become a source for insect and disease damage. You may not know if the stems are killed back until early summer. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: For most shrubs the removal of more than 1/3 of the growth is a problem but Nandinas do not seem to be bothered by drastic pruning. One method of pruning is always to remove the oldest canes at ground level, then cut 1/3 of the remaining canes back to about 1/3 the height of the tallest canes, 1/3 back to 2/3 of the plant height and leave 1/3 uncut. Nandinas bloom on new growth and form their berries during the summer on growth that bloomed in the spring. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Mail order catalogs are often the best source for unusual plants. Two small nurseries in Oregon carry some of the specialty trees: Forestfarm in Williams Oregon and Gossler Farms Nursery in Springfield Oregon. Sometimes the staff at some of the good public gardens know sources of unusual plants. Have you tried contacting someone at Buchart Gardens for suggestions? --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Sometimes, if you are very careful, you can spray the grass with a chemical such as Grass-be-Gone. Some perennials are affected by the spray so read the label very carefully. The safest control is to pull all the grass and use a pre-emergent weed killer such as Preen that is labeled for flower beds. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: This is one of those situations when we wait and see what happens. The sprinkler put out a mass of water which froze into ice on the surface of the grass. The blades of grass were frozen and have been killed. It is possible the roots of the grass were not affected and the plants will continue to develop. At this point there is nothing you can do about the problem except to wait to see if the grass can redevelop. Do not apply fertilizer or any other chemical to the lawn. If the grass has not reestablished by May you may have to reseed or resod the lawn. Remember that centipede grass needs very little fertilizer, one that does not contain phosphorus, and that it is applied in mid-summer. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: I do not think the root system of centipede was killed by the freeze this week but I do know the new growth was partially killed. It is a matter of waiting to see how much damage we have. Keep the lawn mowed and make sure it is watered if there is not rain in your area. Do not fertilize until later in the summer and remember to use a fertilizer without phosphorus. You will know by mid-May if there is permanent damage to spots in the lawn. If there are bare patches you will still have time to overseed or patch the damaged areas. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: I am not too concerned about the crapemyrtles and magnolias. The damage is frozen leaves and there will be additional leaves coming out in a few weeks. Make sure they are watered if we do not have adequate rainfall this spring and summer. Some Japanese maples may be more severely damaged. Check the limbs and trunks of the trees for possible splits in the bark. The open bark is an entry source for insect and disease problems and severely split trunks may kill the tree. Some branches may have to be pruned to remove dead wood. |