Dog Days of Summer!

Well, as far as depressing gardening times, this stack right up there with winter in the frozen North! It's incredibly hot and dry here. It's incredibly hot lots of places right now, but the lack of rain makes it particularly bad in these parts. Water, water, water! Every day a little bit somewhere in the yard. I've planted a lot of things that don't require a lot of water on purpose--like sages, but seeing as so many things are not well established--with recent garden add-ons, tranplants, new trees etc., even heat and drought tolerant plants need to be watered pretty conscientiously to help them get going and keep going.

As I talked about on the other blog, when I went out of town recently for 10 days, Himself was charged with all the watering duties. This was not an easy task, because, unlike jobless me who can water a little in the morning and a little at night, he could really only do it at night. The yard beds looked pretty darn good when I got back so he was diligent in running around with the hose and sprinklers, god bless 'em. But the potted plants on and around the back patio--not so good! He obviously didn't water them EVERY DAY, which one must, especially since a large number of them are bonsais or pre-bonsais, and there was a bit of a holocaust there upon my return. After a couple weeks of avid watering a few look to be recuperating, some have been replaced, but others, that I have still been holding out for look to be stone dead. A couple of the micro-mini roses are included in that, but I can order them again from Uncommon Rose in September. What I'm more upset about is the weeping Barbados Cherry I lovingly brought in the RV from Up North--no sign of leaves returning at all. Now--I can find BC's around here in abundance--they are grown as shrubs here, but I don't know that I've seen a weeping one offered for sale. Will have to check the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's Fall sale in a couple months and/or some nurseries in the Big City, as I'm pretty sure I'm oughta luck here. Another really sad one is a fabulous black cherry tree sapling I was making a bonsai of. I found it at a local nursery, growing at a definite sideways angle, like a fan, in its nursery pot. The proprietor, a natury-hippy type, had found it growing like that somewhere out in the county, dug it up and brought it to his nursery---seemed like a perfect match for me since I don't suppose too many people would want to buy a tree already growing sideways.... Alas--il est mort, je pense...

Now, the other issue is a problem with some insect eating the leaves off my herb-rose garden plants. I had a verifiable problem with snails earlier in the year, and when I started noticing the lavender and herbs getting denuded again in the week before I left, I put out snail bait, but wasn't really catching too many snail. Hmm, I thought and then went out of town. Got back and it looked like a bomb had gone off in that bed! ALL the herbs were nibbled to their stalks and they, whatever they were, had started on the roses, and the fig tree and showed no signs of stopping. I was pretty stymied as I did not see any signs of pests over several mornings---snails, caterpillars etc., but as it was obviously some kind of leaf-cutter/chewer I asked at a local nursery and was given Permethrin to spray on the garden, in a bottle you attach to the hose so that the poison mixes with the water and sprays out. Well, I performed like a Keystone Cop--attached to a wildly spraying hose-bottle I proceeded in spraying the garden bed, and myself quite thoroughly--ick. But ironically, as I was spraying, I noticed a gigantic yellow and black grasshopper-locust thing on the fence just outside the rose-herb bed, in the vicinity of the fig tree, and, figuring I had found one of the culprits, doused him too. (Then I went inside and took a shower).

Don't know if this has solved my problem. I haven't seen any more 'hoppers (do they eat in the dead of night?), and it's hard to tell, after almost complete devastation, whether the eating of leaves has stopped. There were very few left you see, and while I haven't noticed complete and final denuding of my roses, it's hard to know if some of the gnawed leaf edges are from before the spraying or after. Plus, it's so hot and the plants are so stressed, that one has to be very careful spraying things on them--along with the Permethrin it looks like I can use the Neem oil based spray I already had around to discourage munching, but you have to do it all early in the morning and hope that the leaves, what few are left, don't burn too much. The roses are taking an especially long time to leaf back out, which I chalk up to stress--but it makes me very nervous. A few of the lavender plants look to be quite dead and unlikely to leaf again. Oh--and after all the poisons--I can't harvest any of my culinary herbs anyway, even if they should come back! So I guess the plan is to just keep watering and spraying for the sake of the roses, and just leave the rest to do what it will until the weather breaks in September or October, then pull them up and re-plant the herb garden entirely. I have a feeling that that is what a lot of people around here end up doing anyway when the summer is particularly bad heat/drought/bug-wise.

Sigh.

UPDATE: Well, the weeping barbados cherry came back---oddly enough I only noticed it AFTER I found a new one at a local nursery. Seriously, those leaves appeared within a 24 hour or maybe 12 hour period.... Anyway, this guy didn't seem to know what he had. When I brought it up to him he was like--Yeah, isn't that neat how it's growing! Which is to say, he knew it was a Barbados Cherry, which just grow around here as shrubs, but I've only seen upright ones--I don't think he knew there was an actual weeping variety and thought that this one was just a fluke. Anyway itwas in a 3 gallon nursery pot, has a nice thick trunk, and long, long branches and after I described how I wanted to bonsai it he let me have if for $8. Now I've just been looking for the appropriate pot. A couple of my potted quinces have come back, but the couple mini roses, the Black cherry tree bonsai and one other are well and truly dead.

The grasshoppers continue to be a problem--I've seen a few varieties although not in large numbers, but they're hungry it seems. Right now I'm hoping to keep them warded off with "Safer" brand Neem oil spray, but if I have to I'll spray with Permethrin again... As for the heat and drought.........sigh.