Walter Reeves' Four Week Garden Planner

Home and Garden

Walter Reeves' four week garden planner

Week 1: Leyland Cypress is susceptible to a disease that moves from the bottom upwards, causing interior needles to die. The best cure for seridium canker is to prune affected limbs to improve the health of the plant.

Week 1: St. Augustine grass makes a nice lawn and new cultivars are much more hardy than the ones used in Florida. Try 'Raleigh,' 'Palmetto' and 'Mercedes' in Atlanta. A good potting soil can make all the difference to your plants. Look for products that contain mostly peat moss and are sold by the dry quart rather than the pound. Look for the pink, fist-sized flower heads of clerodendron (pictured).

Week 2: Yellow jackets can be quite aggressive in August. If you find a nest, spray the opening at dusk with a short squirt of wasp and hornet spray. Repeat the next night if not all are killed.

Week 2: Look out for an orange fuzzy insect that resembles a large ant. It is a wingless wasp known locally as a "cow killer ant" because the sting is so painful. Purple coneflowers (pictured) with pale, misshapen flowers are afflicted with a virus called aster aster yellows. There is no cure; pull the plant and discard.

Week 3: Don't chop the exposed roots of large trees. Fill the space between them with planting soil and plant a ground cover like green-and-gold (chrysogoanum), chain fern or variegated hosta.

Week 3: Look for the beautiful purple lacy flowers of passion flower (shown here). The leaves host gulf fritillary butterflies, and the flowers mature into an edible, egg-shaped fruit called a maypop. Household ants and roaches are easier to control with gel baits than with sprays. Place small dabs of gel any place you see one of these pests.

Week 4: Need a vine that grows in shade? These do well: Confederate jasmine (shown here), crossvine, variegated Virginia creeper, evergreen clematis, Carolina jessamine.

Week 4: 'Miss Huff' lantana (shown here) is a beautiful shrub, but it often outgrows its garden space. Prune it to whatever size suits you and it will bloom again in a few weeks. Plan to finish all sod-laying in the next couple of weeks. The turfgrass needs several weeks of warm soil to grow roots deeply enough to get through winter without problems.

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Week 1: Leyland Cypress is susceptible to a disease that moves from the bottom upwards, causing interior needles to die. The best cure for seridium canker is to prune affected limbs to improve the health of the plant.

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