Scott Beuerlein Makes GardenRant Proud

Congratulations to GardenRanter Scott Beuerlein for winning not one but TWO Silver Writing Awards from GardenComm (formerly Garden Writers Association).

Scott’s post “Gardening for Health” won in the blog-writing category.

And he won another Silver for his column in Vive Magazine, which we didn’t even realize he wrote for. Sneaky Ranter!

We’ll be rooting for Scott to win GOLD at the GardenComm annual conference in Salt Lake City, coming up in early September.

See all the Silver Award winners here.

Scott Beuerlein Makes GardenRant Proud originally appeared on GardenRant on June 29, 2019.

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Will it Kill My Tree? – Spotted Lanternfly FAQ’s

Our office has been getting lots of questions lately about the Spotted Lanternfly. Many clients want to know “Will the Spotted Lanternfly kill my tree?”

The short answer is “not immediately.” The real answer involves knowing a bit more about their life cycle and how they behave. Read up on some Frequently Asked Questions about the Spotted Lanternfly.

What is the Spotted Lanternfly?

The Spotted Lanternfly is a bug that feeds on specific trees. It’s a type of bug known as a “plant hopper” – in other words, it can fly, and moves from plant-to-plant. It feeds on plants by using its “piercing-sucking mouth-parts” (similar to a mosquito) to pull fluid underneath the bark of trees. The pest’s mobility makes control for Spotted Lanternfly a huge challenge for Tree Care and Arborist services.

Where did Spotted Lanternfly come from?

Spotted Lanternfly is a native of Southeast Asia. It is a native of China, Taiwan and Vietnam. Many experts believe it traveled here in a shipment coming from one of these countries through international commerce. It was first detected in Berks County in 2014.

Can you stop it?

Again, the answer is “no.” The best we can do is to slow the spread of this pest, and protect your landscape.

There are few natural predators for this pest here in North America. However, a study from Cornell University found that two fungi (B. major and B. bassiana) in North America seem to provide control for adults. I emailed back and forth with one of the study authors, and it is unclear at this time if the native fungi will also help control nymphs. Researchers are actively trying to determine if the bacteria only control adult populations, or if these fungi can be used to control nymphs as well. B. bassiana is commercially available in products for nursery managers, while B. major is “poorly known” at this time.

What should I be looking for?

At this point in the year, you will see the “1st instar,” or first-stage of development. They’re called “nymphs” at this point in their life cycle.  They’ll continue to look like this (black with white polka-dots) until they reach the 4th instar. The 4th instar is the last stage of their development before they become full-grown adults.

Right now, you might see them anywhere. Adults lay their eggs on just about anything. We’ve had clients reporting nymphs on decks, potted plants, and patios. You will see these nymphs feeding near where the leaves emerge from branches, or on very young trees. This is because they’re piercing-sucking mouth-parts aren’t well developed yet, and the bark is thinner on young plants and at the end of branches.

How Do I Get Rid of Spotted Lanternfly?

There are several things you can do to try and manage this pest on your your property. Some involve treatments, while others are cultural practices.

Sticky Bands

Right now, you can use what are called “sticky bands” to help control the nymph population. Basically, this involves applying something similar to a giant “glue trap” to your tree. The idea is that the nymphs crawl onto the trap, get stuck, and never further their development. You can buy these products online.

These products are falling out of favor, however. They’re so sticky they’re catching “non-target” organisms, like birds and squirrels in some cases. A decent work-around for this is to simply use some cheap duct tape and DIY your own.

Tree Identification

Knowing which trees you have on your property is critical as well. The Spotted Lanternfly is able to complete it’s life cycle on a wide host of plants. It seems to prefer Ailanthus altissima or “Tree of Heaven” for feeding and reproduction. Identifying this tree, and removing it from your property, is an important part of management. Simply cutting it down will seldom remove the problem. You should consider consulting with a professional who can help you remove this invasive plant for good.

Spotted Lanternfly feeds on other plants, too. It will feed on anything with a high sugar content in the sap. In our area, this means any time of fruit or ornamental fruit plants. This includes grape vines (cultivated or wild), maple trees, pear, apple, cherry and plum trees (fruit-bearing or ornamental), and birch trees. Knowing if you have these plants on or near your property so you can look for the Lanternfly is an important part of management. Google images of leaves and bark if you’re not sure what these trees look like so you can educate yourself!

Treatments

Now that you know about cultural management practices (removing Ailanthus trees and sticky bands), you should consider treatment options. At this time, I recommend treating only the plants in your landscape that are A) most at risk, and B) part of your outdoor living.

We thought long and hard about our treatment options. We even consulted with some university researchers about the program before offering it to the public. Our program is designed to give you the best, season-long control possible in the most environmentally responsible way possible.

Before contracting with a professional to treat your trees, ask lots of questions. Do they understand the pest’s life cycle? How many treatments are they doing? Why are they doing those treatments? Have they consulted all the available information before formulating their plan?

Will Spotted Lanternfly Kill My Tree?

Back to the original question – “Will it kill my tree?” The answer is “probably not directly.”

Damage caused by piercing-sucking mouth-parts opens the bark. There’s an open wound on the tree. This leaves the tree susceptible to other bugs and diseases.

Think of it like this – a chest cold doesn’t necessarily kill you. If you leave it untreated, however, it can develop into pneumonia, and the congestion building up in your lungs is what kills you. Leaving your landscape trees untreated is like that – a chest cold. It’s not going to kill them immediately, but over time, it’ll only get worse and lead to plant death.

What a mess!

The larger concern is that it will be a mess. As it feeds, Spotted Lanternfly secretes (translation: basically poops) a sticky substance called “honeydew.” The Lanternfly feeds in such high numbers, researchers often have to wear raincoats to keep dry. It’s even been described as being “rained on.” This picture at left is of nymphs, but the adults will be much worse.

This honeydew is also the perfect breeding ground for a fungus called “black sooty mold.” You can see some of it in this picture already forming. This is basically going to make outdoor spaces underneath these trees unusable. This will be especially true in public areas without treatment, like parks.

 

If you have questions about Spotted Lanternfly management at your home, business, municipality or school district, we’d love to speak with you. You may contact us here.

The post Will it Kill My Tree? – Spotted Lanternfly FAQ’s appeared first on Tomlinson Bomberger.

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A Suburbitat in Colorado

“You can’t talk about conservation on one hand and development on the other as if they were two unrelated issues because they’re not.”—Tom Hoyt (who does both)

It’s a familiar cycle. Wilderness is turned into farmland, which often gets developed into shopping malls, industrial sites, or residential cul de sacs. Suburban cul de sacs are not unknown in Western New York; they are more distinguished by their convenience than by their landscaping. But this 3,500-acre site in Fort Collins, Colorado is different; it’s a residential development where wilderness has crept back in, through design.

The High Plains Environmental Center maintains about 700 acres of wildlife habitat and public environmental park in the middle of the Centerra mixed-use community. There are trails, ponds, native plant demonstration gardens, wetlands, a fruit orchard, community garden raised beds, and a native plant nursery. Walking the trails, I was continually aware of birds, insects, and other creatures, with bees working away on the native shrubs I passed. There are dozens of species of birds living here, including kestrels, blue-winged teal, grebes, herons, American eagles, hawks, rails, sandpipers, owls, warblers, and many more, including these American white pelicans (above), which I had never seen before. You can get a complete plant and animal species list from the website.

There are other such communities throughout the US—sadly, this movement has not come yet to Western New York, to my knowledge. This is a model where conservation can support itself; fees generated by building permits are paid to a nonprofit and a community that’s attractive to investors, residents, and businesses emerges. HPEC started as the idea of architect/builder Tom Hoyt (quoted above) who, with his company, McStain, signed an agreement with developers Centerra in 2001. It took 16 years to clean-up and restore the site. HPEC is now headed by Jim Holstrup, who spoked to the group of bloggers I was part of (the annual Garden Bloggers tour, which took place in Denver this year). It became Colorado’s first Community Wildlife Habitat in 2018.

There are those who simply deplore development sprawl outside of urban areas and wish it would just stop. It’s not going to, but it needs to get smarter in terms of environmental impact. We need to get smarter everywhere we live.

A Suburbitat in Colorado originally appeared on GardenRant on June 18, 2019.

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Great Gardens of Baltimore!

I’ve become a fan of the Maryland Horticultural Society, which attracts big-name speakers and puts on the very best garden tour in the Mid-Atlantic, if you ask me. So I hightailed it up there recently to see some gardens, all winners and very close to each other, both in outer Baltimore and in the adjacent suburb of Towson.

The tour organizer, by the way, is the very person who rescued me when I was stranded at the Philadelphia Flower Show last year. She’s become a friend.

Here are the highlights of the tour, for this tour-goer at least, and don’t miss the surprise encounter at the last garden.

Above, the first garden caught my attention for the owner’s name – Roland Oehme, son of Wolfgang Oehme, co-founder of Oehme Van Sweden Landscape Architects, and a landscape architect himself. Coincidentally, part of the rear garden had been designed for clients by Wolfgang in the early 1980’s.

The garden was too small and jam-packed with plants and people to give my poor photography skills a chance.

Next, I loved the hardscape in this garden – great flagstone walkway to the front door, the pergola, and that lovely stone face on the exterior.

In the back yard, more good design in plants and structures. Although I love the look of that porch, I’d sure want to screen it in.

Speaking of screened-in porches, the next garden had the perfect one right in front.

In the back, this panorama shot only hints at the large expanse of lawn surrounded by border.

Facing the back of the house, this shot includes the gardener Bill Martin (seated, with a hat and pink shirt) answering every visitor’s question. The brochure tells us the garden was influenced by the Pavilions at the University of Virginia, Gertrude Jekyll, Giverny, and “a personal meeting with David Culp and periodically re-reading his important book, The Layered Garden.”

Here’s another charming house made even prettier by avid gardeners. Anyone know what architectural style this is?

Another home I can imagine happily living in and gardening around.

Great carriage house, too.

Finally, the last garden and the surprise encounter I promised.

First I photographed gardener Diana Jacquot’s water features and then found her chatting with visitors in the backyard of her home in Homeland Village, a gem of a neighborhood I’d never heard of before.

She asked my friend and me where we were from and when we answered Greenbelt, Maryland she exclaimed something to the effect of “That’s where my favorite gardenblogger lives!” (Honestly, she might have said “Oh, I read a garden blog by someone there,” and I’ve mentally embellished the compliment.)

Whatever – it was exciting to make a connection with a reader, after blogging for 14 or so years, during which it sometimes feels like I’m blogging into the wind.

She followed up with an email to say, “It was exciting for me to have you tour my garden as I have been a big fan of your blog and Garden Rant since way back when the blog began. I have always appreciated the quality and the diversity of garden writers and subjects and unlike many blogs, it has only gotten better with time.” She didn’t remember exactly what she said when we met but wrote that “I’m happy with whatever way you want to describe our meeting, as you are one of my favorite bloggers and I had so many conversations with all the visitors that day, the specifics elude me.”

Diana, thanks from all of us at the Rant for those encouraging words!

More emails led to my friend and I inviting Diana and the Hort Society’s tour volunteers to visit our own special town for a tour packed with New Deal history, our own gardens, and to make a day of it, the public gardens near us – Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and the National Arboretum. So that’ll be fun!

But back to Diana and her fabulous garden, I found this in Baltimorestyle.com:

Gardening: “It is the center of my life,” says this accomplished gardener who has never taken a gardening course. She gardens before work and again after work until sunset. “It is my passion … Other people call it an obsession!”

“It is an antidote to sadness and a full contact sport.  I do Pilates. I am passionate about skiing. I hike. But nothing takes more out of my body than gardening,” she says. “At the same time, it tunes you into a place in yourself. It’s a retreat, a sanctuary, a silent place with the processes of nature and wonder around you. It is very personal, yet it involves a lot of friendship, too. I love the people I’ve met through gardening.”

Diana is a hands-on gardener, planting, weeding, pruning, editing as she goes along throughout the growing season. “The challenges are the motivating force behind my love for gardening. I hope that people, when they visit, walk away with the impression that if they come back at another time, a garden full of surprises and delight will await them.”

I’ll give the final word to something Diana said about her garden for the Hort Society Tour brochure:

“It’s not that big, but it’s an excessive garden,” says Jacquot. “I’ve always said I’ve never met a plant I didn’t like.”

I think I’ve met the quintessential GardenRant reader.

Great Gardens of Baltimore! originally appeared on GardenRant on June 14, 2019.

from GardenRant http://bit.ly/2WHGWrM

Philodendron Philharmonic

For the love of begonias

A Day in the Life of an Arborist

It’s early morning on an overcast and slightly breezy Wednesday in early May.  The clouds look indecisive and the wind isn’t enough to be dangerous, just enough to make you wear a hoodie or a jacket. Today is the day I get my initiation, a glimpse into a day in the life of an Arborist.

Here’s some of what I learned.

Your lawn will (probably) be damaged

There are many factors that go into this.  The most common concern clients have is about the equipment moving around on their lawn.  This is a completely valid concern.

There may be times your tree pruning company tells you they cannot service your property. For example, after a rain, you wouldn’t want heavy equipment on the lawn.  The summer dry spells or frozen ground in the winter are great times to have your service completed; you don’t have to worry about this quite as much.

There are things some companies do to try and offset this damage, like using plywood where the bucket truck needs to drive across the lawn.  Depending on the distance the truck needs to move, this might be impractical or unnecessary.

Another consideration when it comes to lawn damage is from the pruning or removal process itself.  Trained and certified Arborists will often use pulleys (called “blocks”) to tie-off limbs and control the direction the limbs fall.  Depending on the size of the limbs being removed, trying to lower the limb is likely just dangerous.

As it is, on the day I was out, we didn’t have to worry about damage to the ground from the truck; there was a gravel path next to the tree we were removing.  We did still have to worry about falling limbs, however.  At one point, the impact of a limb hitting the ground on that gravel path sent a quarter-sized rock flying 30 feet across the jobsite (I was well out of the way) and hit me.  That type of weight hitting turf is still (probably) going to cause damage.

That brings me to my next point…

It’s dangerous

That limb I just described probably weighed a couple hundred pounds. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this limb falling on you would really ruin your day.

According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), there were 45 accidents related to “tree trimming” nationwide, or one every 8 days.  Of those incidents, 35 of them involved a fatality.

Those are just the reported injuries and deaths.  OSHA only requires reporting for Tree companies if there’s a death, hospitalization, loss of eye, or amputation. As a result, other accidents undoubtedly happened that went unreported.  This doesn’t include homeowners who were injured or killed trying to prune a tree by themselves.

None of this mentions the personal protective equipment (PPE) that you should be wearing, which includes a hard hat, safety glasses, gloves, and long sleeves.  On this day, I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and I had to tuck the strings into the sweatshirt, making sure they didn’t get caught on anything.  The regular Arborists out on the job wearing sweatshirts had removed those strings altogether.

Then there’s the chipper.  This machine literally grabs limbs and feeds them into a giant grinding wheel, and shoots the debris into the back of a truck.  At one point, I was nearly injured when the chipper grabbed a limb and it turned sideways, bringing up part of the branch and almost hitting me in the face.

This is why we always recommend you allow a professional to service the trees on your property.  Owning a chainsaw does not necessarily make a person qualified to prune or drop a tree.

A working knowledge of Physics is critical

You can translate this as “experience” if you like.

Basically, when you’ve got someone 50 feet in the air in a bucket or tied-in to a tree with a harness, that’s dangerous enough.

Now add a chainsaw.

Now factor in that there will be limbs falling to the ground from that point.

If that person doesn’t understand where to cut, several bad things can happen.  As a best-case scenario, they will get the bar (“blade”) of the chainsaw pinched between parts of the branch they’re cutting, and unable to move it.

A scarier scenario is the limb falls where it damages property.

Worst-case is someone is injured or killed.

During my day out with our Tree Pruning crew, I watched that guy (it happened to be a guy in this case) with the chainsaw 50 feet in the air consistently drop limbs in places where no one was close.  He was conscientious of where the limb was falling, and more conscientious of where the people on the ground were.

Also, this takedown happened to be next to a chain link fence (no more than 15 feet from the tree trunk). It was pretty impressive that the entire day, a single branch fell and hit that fence, with no property damage.

It’s exhausting

I’m actually a fairly fit individual. Well, I’d like to think I’m more fit than most people, anyway.  I run about 10-11 miles a week, lift heavy weight, and kayak and bike for recreation.  I’m not necessarily a couch potato.

I was tired at the end of the day.  Like, really tired.

This job is physically taxing.  That “small” 20-foot tree you are thinking about taking down yourself is going to kill your whole weekend, my friend.  Especially if you’re doing it by yourself. Come Monday, you’ll wish you had another weekend to recover.

There’s hauling large limbs and chunks of the trunk around until you get them where you want them.  Then you have to clean up the smaller limbs and branches.  You have to rake a TON (you won’t realize until you’re knee-deep in the project – trust me).  For example, I heard one Arborist joke to another “I had a client ask me about a takedown like this.  I told him it was $1,000, but if I don’t have to rake, it’s eight bucks!”

Conclusion

As a homeowner, you have a lot to worry about.  There are always considerations you have to make in terms of balancing the “Do It Myself” versus “Hire A Professional.” For a job on this scale, please take the time to hire a real professional.

Check reviews, check to make sure they have insurance, check to see the company is a member of any relevant industry associations, check to see if there are Certified Arborists on staff. Don’t compromise on safety or quality in this area.

 

If you’d like to talk more about our services, you can Contact Us here.

The post A Day in the Life of an Arborist appeared first on Tomlinson Bomberger.

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Mastering the Gardener

A New Radio Program

What was it that F. Scott Fitzgerald said?  That there are no second acts in American lives?  He was clearly no gardener.  We get a new act every spring.  I took comfort in this thought as I planted out seedlings yesterday, musing about my fledgling new career in radio.

One aspect of gardening about which I am passionate is how our craft brings you face to face with the realities of natural systems.  You can’t work with plants without sooner or later noticing how the life in the soil affects the health of your plants and in turn the size of your harvest.  And it’s hard to remain blind to the realities of climate change as, year by year, you notice spring shrubs and bulbs blooming earlier and earlier and the fall frost arriving later.

It frustrated me that the traditional print media for which I worked through my first career, gardening magazines and newspaper columns, were so reluctant to publish anything about these environmental realities.  That doesn’t sell products, the editors would explain, and that makes our advertisers unhappy.  GardenRant has provided a forum for such discussions – along with input pro and con from readers.  But I’ve been looking to expand my reach.

That’s why, for the last year, I’ve been volunteering for my local public radio station, WESU FM.  This spring I took the station’s training for radio hosts, and completed four on-air internships.   I petitioned to produce a half hour program, “Growing Greener” that would bring to listeners leading voices in the environmental gardening community.  Just a couple of weeks ago, the station managers agreed to allow me a half hour of air-time on Wednesday evenings from 6:00-6:30.

It has been a scramble. I’ve had a lot to learn about editing sound files, and how to structure a show.  The station staff, largely students from Wesleyan University, have been very helpful.  Likewise, the people I contacted for interviews have been wonderfully supportive. Dr. Douglas Tallamy, the great entomologist from the University of Delaware and the author of Bringing Nature Home, took the time to speak with me for my very first program, which broadcast last week.  I’ve had a great time calling gardeners who are my heroes such as Larry Weaner and Margaret Roach, and finding them universally encouraging.  As a result, I can promise listeners a succession of interesting and provocative half hours.

Which brings me back to you. I have come to depend on the GardenRant readers for strong and varied opinions and insights.  I’m hoping some of you will transfer that to my radio program. You can stream it live at wesufm.org, or download it any time you want from the station archive (same web address) under the heading of “Growing Greener”. Every program lists, at its end, a web address where you can submit comments or suggestions.  I’m hoping I can count on you.

A New Radio Program originally appeared on GardenRant on June 3, 2019.

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