Weed-Be-Gone
Never use Round-Up again in your garden. This formula is better than anything you can by anywhere! It will kill anything you spray it on and it's safe for humans and animals.
Recipe: 1 gallon of vinegar, 2 cups of Epsom salts, 1/4 cup of Dawn Dish Soap (the blue original)
Mix and pour the formula into a standard 2-gallon garden sprayer. Spray the weeds in your garden in the morning after the dew has evaporated. Walk away. When you return to your garden in the evening, the weeds will be gone! It’s that easy!
Bob Walsh sent these helpful hints in dealing with those pesky Marsh Rabbits. R.S. Walsh is always available to advise you on landscape plants.
Recognize this guy? He’s a Southeastern Lubber Grasshopper and chances are, he’s in your garden. Lubbers are a highly-populated pest living on the islands. They consume vegetation and dine on lilies (particularly Crinum lilies) and bromeliads. They also produce thousands of offspring each year which, in turn, feed on all sorts of delicate plantings. Lubber eggs are laid on the ground near the plants they prefer. When they hatch, the nymphs attack the plant leaves, eating them all the way to the roots. Our Crinum lily was shredded by these lubbers year after year.
While I was on a tour of the beautiful gardens at Sanibel Moorings, Anita Force Marshall, the resort’s former manager of horticulture, addressed the problem. Anita shared her recipe for ridding a garden of these prehistoric-looking grasshoppers.
Save your old coffee grounds in a plastic grocery bag in the refrigerator. When you have accumulated a good amount (about 10 - 15 cups), pour them into a 5-gallon bucket of hot water. Stir the mixture, let the coffee grounds steep and the liquid cool. When lukewarm, pour the entire contents of the bucket (including grounds) all over the plant or plants that being invaded by the lubbers. It is important to soak the ground under and around the plant. In a matter of days, the lubbers will be gone. You might want to follow up with another similar treatment about six weeks later. Lubbers for some reason hate coffee and will avoid a coffee-treated plant.
Our Crinum lily is now flourishing and putting out up to 10 purple and white blooms at a time. We only have to use Anita’s coffee recipe once a year. Who knows? Maybe the caffeine affects the lubbers and gives them the jitters.
Carol Zell
IXORA - Fay Carney
Named after the East Indian deity, Ishwar, this exotic shrub is extremely popular in tropical landscapes. It meets two criteria for plant selection that most gardeners appreciate - minimal maintenance and year-round color. It is also very difficult to kill; it will keep popping up even after you thought you uprooted it!
There are 562 species of Ixora and five colors -- pink, orange, yellow, red and white. There is even a beautiful variety that is a combination of orange and yellow called Sunset. The leaves are dark green and glossy. The standard Ixora shrub will grow to 10-15 feet tall and 4-6 feet wide, but there are dwarf varieties that only grow to 2-4 feet high. Ixoras flower year-round and can be used as a hedge, a border, or a featured specimen.
This plant loves the sun, but will tolerate some shade, although it will bloom less under shady conditions. It also loves to be watered frequently. Ixoras prefer acidic soil and will become cholorotic (yellow-leafed) in alkaline soils, although my personal experience is that they are not that fussy. It is recommended that it not be planted next to concrete structures because the run-off from the concrete will make the soil alkaline.
Ixoras need to be fertilized at least twice a year and should be pruned to shape. Severe pruning is not recommended because Ixoras do not recover well from this condition. In the winter, black spots may appear on the leaves. This is not an indication of a fungus or an insect infestation, so avoid using fungicides or pesticides. This condition is caused by the inability of the plant to uptake phosphorus and potassium because the soil is too cold. There is nothing you can do about this problem; it will resolve itself in the spring when the soil warms up.
Ixoras may also become the victim of sooty mold which is caused by being attacked by aphids or scale. An insecticidal soap spray will remedy this problem.
In a nutshell, Ixoras are low-maintenance, high-pay-off plants that are great for snow-birds!