Green Thumb Gazette, July 2024

NC Drought Conditions

If you haven't been living under a rock for the past month (or conveniently have been inside with the AC blasting), you know our weather has been hot and dry. We've had a few scattered rain showers recently, but not nearly enough. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), June was our driest on record since 1895, with a statewide average precipitation of only 1.35 inches.

After such a dry June, it's hard to recall how much rain we actually received in May and early June. In the state precipitation map below, Lenoir received the most rain with 4.23 inches, 3.03 inches of which fell on June 4th-5th. Despite these early rains, the persistent heat and prolonged dry spell quickly depleted the moisture from May. Now, Abnormally Dry (D0) or drought conditions cover 99.98% of the state, according to the North Carolina State Climate Office.

This extreme weather has raised concerns about drought conditions. By June 18, over 65% of North Carolina was categorized as Abnormally Dry (D0), with no areas classified in severe drought (D1-D4). As of July 2nd, the percentages have worsened to:
99.98% in D0 - Abnormally Dry
74.52% in D1 - Moderate Drought
8.399% in D2 - Severe Drought

Signs of this drought stress are visible everywhere: our cool-season turfgrass is withered, trees are shedding leaves to conserve moisture, crops and plants are struggling, and water levels in creeks, streams, and reservoirs are low.

At home, there are steps you can take to support your plants:
Water early in the morning, including established shrubs and trees.
Use mulch to retain soil moisture and cool the ground.
Wait to plant any new perennials, shrubs, and trees until the fall.
Provide one inch of water per week for the first year after planting.
Water deeply but infrequently to promote strong root growth.

For more detailed state climate data, visit the North Carolina State Climate Office. We have a weather station in Taylorsville where you can monitor local conditions."

Japanese Beetles… the menace of roses and your lawn!
I have had COUNTLESS calls this summer about Japanese beetles wreaking havoc on roses. The best thing for Japanese beetles is the active ingredient called Carbaryl (Sevin). There are other products out there that work as well, but Sevin is relatively available for homeowner use pretty much anywhere. I recommend the liquid version of this product because the powder version can easily get caught in the furry legs and bodies of many of our good pollinators (which we don’t want).

The problem with applying carbaryl (Sevin) is that it is only going to work on the beetles, or adults. Another way to help control your future Japanese beetle population is to apply a granular product in the fall and spring to help control the grub stage of the beetle. There are a few granular products that will work on Japanese beetle grubs, but the ones that are more readily available include B.t. (which is a natural bacteria) and Imidacloprid (Merit). The key to granular applications is that you should make a few applications in the fall (August - October) and a few applications again in the spring (April-May). The reason for this is that Japanese beetles don’t all mark their calendars for the same date to lay their eggs in the soil. They will lay them at different times during that period. So to get more of the population, you need to make multiple applications.

With all that in mind, know that you may never get rid of all the Japanese beetles because think, those beetles have wings and can fly a good distance. If your neighbor doesn’t work to help keep their population down, their beetles are just going to fly on over to your landscape. Also, no matter what you do, Japanese beetles will ALWAYS be attracted to roses, it’s just their nature and preference. So one alternative to help get rid of those beetles is to pull up all your roses!

I hope this information helps those of you who are knee deep in Japanese beetles! If you have any other questions about controlling them or grubs, please give me a call!

We will be having our Native Plant sale again this fall so be sure to get your order in ASAP! All plants will be coming from our friends at Carolina Native Nursery in Burnsville, NC and are all native plants to NC!

You may ask, "Why should I plant natives?" or "I have enough to manage with my lawn alone, why add something else to my plate?" Native plants are amazing for you and for the natural world around you. Because these plants are native to our area and have evolved to be adaptive to our soils and climate, they are actually a lot easier to care for in the landscape. Most native plants require "no babying", using less water and fertilizers than many ornamentals, not to mention they are BEAUTIFUL!
Because our way of life is urbanized now more than ever, we have a lot of fragmented land. This means that in some places, land has been broken up where it was once continuous and full of native plants to support wildlife.

The remaining isolated areas are sometimes not enough to support the wildlife left in them. In our own landscapes, we have transformed the land we have into a monoculture of turf, concrete, and exotic plants, repelling pollinators, beneficial insects, and wildlife. Adding a few natives back into your landscape instead of overusing ornamentals or exotics helps to preserve the complex web of biological diversity, which we call "nature". They improve the health and help to restore ecosystems by providing food and shelter for pollinators, beneficial insects, birds, & mammals. Native plants also offer great nesting sites for birds, and act as larval hosts for many of our butterflies and moths!

It has been shown that this type of action also creates a "snowball effect". This means that when you install natives in your flower beds and you get excited about seeing all the beneficial insects, birds, or butterflies, you begin to tell your friends & family. Then they add some native plants to their landscapes and so on. What you do for your ecosystem has an impact!

Tips for adding native plants in your landscape:
Diversify your landscape with: evergreens for winter cover & berries, plants with seeds, fruits, and nectar for food, grasses for shelter and seeds, and host plants for insects with larval stages.
Plan to have some visual interest in every season – this can be tough in the winter sometimes, but dried seed heads from coneflowers, plants with winter berries, or even grasses are beautiful in the winter!
Don’t plant too close to windows (because birds will accidentally hit them).
Mimic nature by planting in gentle sweeping curves, irregular shapes, clusters, and layers.
Plant so that your plants have room to grow! (Read that again!)
Expect & be OKAY with some foliage missing! – you can’t have beautiful butterflies without the caterpillars!

Come out and support your local extension office and your ecosystem this September by purchasing some native plants! If you have any questions about ordering, please contact Cari Rosenbalm, Horticulture Agent, at 828-632-4451.

"Because life is fueled by the energy captured from the sun by plants, it will be the plants that we use in our gardens that determine what nature will be like 10, 20, and 50 years from now." – Doug Tallamy, American entomologist, ecologist, and conservationist

Farmers Market

If you are in need of fresh, local produce, honey, baked goods, eggs, beautiful planters for your porch, perennials for your flower beds, handmade jewelry or crafts, you have got to visit the Alexander County Farmers Market! The Taylorsville Market is held every Saturday from 8am to Noon and we also have the Bethlehem Market (located at Mount Bethel Methodist Church off Hwy 127) that runs every Thursday from 3-6pm. We have so many awesome vendors that we are THRILLED to have! If you are in town on Thursday or Saturday, stop by the market to support your local vendors! If you are interested in becoming a vendor at either market, please contact Cari Rosenbalm, Horticulture Agent, at 828-632-4451. Here are a few goodies from this past weekend from our local vendors!

Leyland Cypress Issues and Alternatives

Leyland cypress… one of the landscape trees that makes my job as a horticulture agent a little more challenging. This tree is a hybrid of two other trees from the pacific coast (Monterey cypress and Alaska-cedar), is sterile, capable of growing over 100ft tall, and CAN be grown in many different conditions as far as soil, weather, and amount of sunlight it receives. It seems like everyone has tried to implement this tree into their landscapes at some point or another, mainly for screening purposes because they grow tall and grow fast.

The problems with this tree, however, are abundant, especially in the south. The main problem I see on a weekly basis it seems, is that homeowners plant them too close. These trees grow so fast and so tall that even if they had the perfect environment to grow, they won’t be able to make it because they are now competing with the one 3 feet beside it for light, water, and nutrients. Not to mention that they are now more prone to disease since there is virtually no air moving through their canopies and they are stressed out.

The next problem I see most with these trees are that they are very susceptible to root rots and stem cankers, specifically Armillaria and Phytophthora root rots and Seiridium and Botryosphaeria cankers. These are UNTREATABLE diseases and will spread to the rest of your leylands. Most of these diseases occur because of poor plant spacing and poor planting technique.

If you absolutely know that you want leyland cypresses for your landscape, you need to measure the area you are wanting to put them in FIRST. Leyland cypress are supposed to be spaced out at a MINIMUM of 10-15ft apart and I would push that a bit further to 16-18ft apart. I know when you get these trees sometimes that they start out as 2ft tall at Lowes or Home Depot, but they do grow very fast so they will fill in the space I assure you. If you have the money and want privacy a little faster, you can do 5-8ft apart and then once they start to grow together, take out every other tree so that the ones left can grow to their full potential. Second, please take a soil test before planting and amend your soil if needed. This is important because a lot of those diseases are caused by too much water. Lots of clay in your soil can trap water in your planting hole and cause the roots to have wet feet and be more susceptible to diseases. Add organic matter or other soil amendments to heavy clay areas to help water move through the soil profile faster.

If you are looking for a fast-growing, evergreen shrub for a living privacy fence or have leylands that aren’t doing well and are thinking of things to replace them with in the future, here is a list of alternative options with less problems! It is important to diversify your living fence to help prevent the spread of problems from one plant to the next. Creating a mixed-species screen is also aesthetically pleasing because it offers a combination of textures to your landscape.

Leyland Cypress Alternatives

Cryptomeria japonica
Hesperocyparis arizonica
Ilex cornuta
Ilex x ‘Emily Brunner’
Ilex ‘Mary Nell’
Ilex x ‘Nellie R. Stevens’
Ilex x attenuata ‘Savannah’
Illicium floridanum
Illicium parviflorum
Osmanthus x fortunei
Ternstroemia gymnanthera
Picea abies

Native Alternatives
Ilex vomitoria
Juniperus virginiana
Magnolia grandiflora

Check out these tips for proper planting techniques when you go to plant any trees or large shrubs in your landscape (preferably, you in the fall)!