Silver Tree Landscape Design

The Magic of Vinegar

So it can be bit smelly, but vinegar has so many wonderful uses besides just drizzling it over fresh mozzarella or taking the burn away from your first sunburn of the season. Here are some uses for vinegar outside in your garden and just around your house.

FOR THE GARDEN:

• Grow beautiful azaleas by occasionally watering plants with a mixture of two tablespoons vinegar to one-quart water. Azaleas love acidic soil.
• Kill grass on walks and driveways.  Pour full strength on unwanted grass.
• Kill weeds. Spray full strength on new growth until plants have starved.
• Increase soil acidity. In hard water areas, add a cup of vinegar to a gallon of tap water for watering acid loving plants like rhododendrons, gardenias, or azaleas. The vinegar will release iron in the soil for the plants to use.
• Freshen cut flowers. Add 2 tablespoons vinegar and 1 teaspoon sugar for each quart of water.
• Prolong the life of flowers in a vase. Add two tablespoons of vinegar plus three tablespoons of sugar per quart of warm water. Stems should be in three to four inches of water.
• Neutralize garden lime. Rinse your hands liberally with vinegar after working with garden lime to avoid rough and flaking skin. Clean pots before repotting, rinse with vinegar to remove excess lime.
• To get ride of calcium buildup on brick or on limestone, use a spray bottle with half vinegar and half water, then just let it set. The solution will do all the work.

Buggin' Out

A quick side note before we continue the Bug Blog:

Black China Café on Soquel Ave. is hosting a fundraiser for the Homeless Garden Project. Enjoy delicious food, a delightful garden and fantastic coffee all day tomorrow (Tuesday, July 18th) and help out this great local charity while your doing it.

The list of beneficial insects is rather extensive so we have listed only the most common and readily available insects here. You may need to check the availability of different types of beneficial insects in your area and then choose the one that suits your needs.

Cryptolaemus Beetles resemble the Ladybug, but are darker in color. After the adults are released into the garden they will immediately seek out mealy bugs to consume. The eggs are usually laid on an infested plant so that the larvae can also feed on the mealy bugs.

Green lacewings larvae (aphid lions) will eat spider mites, thrips, leafhoppers, whiteflies and caterpillar eggs. This insect is normally purchased in the egg stage, and allowed to hatch out in the proximity of an insect problem. The larvae will feed for only 2 or 3 weeks before becoming adults, at which time it may become necessary to introduce additional larvae to your garden rather than relying on the reproduction habits of your adults. Lacewings are most effective when a large number of the larvae are introduced into a limited area.

Ladybugs (Ladybird beetles) feed on aphids, chinch bugs, whiteflies, and mites, as well as many other soft-bodied insects and their eggs. There are more than a hundred ladybug or "lady beetle" species. These insects are normally purchased as adults and released into the garden. Each adult may consume as many as 5,000 aphids during their adult life. When mature, each female will begin to lay as many as 3-4 dozen eggs each day. Upon hatching, each ladybug larvae will begin consuming 50 aphids each of the 21 days until they reach the adult stage, when the cycle begins again. No matter how you add it up... that's a lot of aphids and undesirables removed from your plants.

Beneficial Bugs

Utilizing beneficial insects as a natural control to destructive insects is not by any means a new concept. There are many 'good bugs' in the world, that have not received the notoriety of the Ladybug, because they may not be quite as cute, or maybe the name of a Trichogramma wasp may not sound as sweet to some of us. Nonetheless, beneficial insects will help to keep your garden free of harmful pests and hopefully reduce or eliminate the need of insecticides in your garden.

It is easy for you to bring beneficial insects to your garden by growing plants and flowers, which provide food and a natural home. You can also purchase many good bugs at most larger nurseries and garden centers, but you will still want to provide them with suitable plants. It is important not to over populate your garden with beneficial insects, because if there is not enough for them to prey on they will simply leave your garden in search of food elsewhere. With that being said, you will need to monitor your plants to ensure that if the benefits are outnumbered, you may need to add reinforcements or vice versa

Many of the insects, which you can utilize, do not actually control the work themselves. They spend their lives enjoying the nectar and pollen from your flowers, and creating offspring. It is the larvae stage of these offspring, which does the actual hunting and eating of the harmful insects.

Plants that attract and provide homes for beneficial insects include:

    Alyssum
    Butterfly weed
    Caraway
    Clover
    Coriander
    Dill
    Fennel
    Marigolds
    Nasturtiums (pictured above)
    Wild carrot
    Yarrow

In tomorrow’s post we’ll list the insects that these plants will house.

Invasives and Alternatives

Acacia
Acacia spp
There are a few species that are in the Santa Cruz area which are intensely invasive. The most common is seen along the entrance to Highway 17. The leaves are feathery with a gray-green hue. Many people find themselves sneezing as they encounter the yellow flowers in early spring. These trees, can grow to 40 feet and spread by underground runners.
Native Alternatives: Willow; Salix spp., Western Alder; Alnus rubra, Big Leaf Maple; Acer macrophyllum, Tan Bark Oak; Lithocarpus densiflorus

European Beach Grass
Ammophila arenaria
This plant was brought to California from Europe to help stabilize the sand dunes. Unfortunately, they did too good of a job which in turn has flooded out the natives. It has also hindered the sand dunes natural characteristics.
Native Alternatives: In the dune areas reintroduce the some of the original coastal natives such as, Lizard Tail Eriophyllum staechadifolium, Coastal Buckwheat; Eriogonum latifolium, Pacific Reed Grass; Calamagrostis nutkaensis,
For more see Ice plant native alternatives.

Iceplant
Carpobrotus edulis
Native Alternatives: Seaside daisy; Erigeron glaucus, Sand strawberry; Fragaria chiloensis, Mock Heather; Ericameria ericoides, Beach Evening Primrose; Camissonia cheiranthifolia, Beach sagewort; Artemesia pycnocephala, Yellow Sand Verbena; Abronia latifolia, Bluff Lettuce; Dudleya caepitosa
Non-native Alternatives: Hardy iceplant; Delosperma cooperi, Freeway Daisy; Osteospermum fruticosum, Wall germander; Teucrium chamaedrys, Showy dewflower; Drosanthemum floribundum.

Picture on right: Dudleya caepitosa

Non-Native Invasives: Trannies of the Plant World

This one topic of Native plants and their non-native, invasive counterparts is a small fish in a big pond. A pond filled with morality, ecology, human footprint, waste and responsibility to name a few. We don’t want to address these fish today, but simply acknowledge that they exist and are intertwined with any discussion of native and invasive plants. 

All ecosystems are a delicate system of checks and balances. Animals and plants survive, flourish or die based on millions of years of fine-tuning this system. When we introduce plants that are not originally from our locale we are disrupting this balancing act. In many situations it works out fine, the ecosystem supports these outsiders and the newcomers give something back to the earth. However, there are cases where this is not true. Some plants are so harmful to the ecosystem that they bury natives, reduce biodiversity, plague California’s agriculture industry, start fires and cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year to remove.

To make things more complicated each environment is different and what may be beneficial in Santa Cruz, CA may be harmful in Timbuktu. It’s important when planting to know what is and is not a problem for your specific area.

To be continued tomorrow.