Last evening my family and I had the privilege of watching Jake Goebbert of the San Diego Padres play at Wrigley Field. My husband had previously put an embargo on me attending baseball games with him because I was more interested in sampling the food at the stadium than watching the action on the field. With Hampshire’s hometown hero playing, I concentrated more on what was happening on the diamond. In addition to being the pride of Hampshire, Jake is also the grandson of Sun City residents, Jim and Esther Goebbert. Jake not only played well last evening, but he also has served to inspire hundreds of children and young men from a small northern Illinois town to follow their dreams. With a strong work ethic and a well defined moral code of conduct, Jake is proving anything is possible for those kids wearing purple while sitting in the friendly confines cheering on their favorite major league baseball player.
Because I didn’t walk around the stadium during the game, between innings, I did what I usually do, study the landscaping. Overall, landscaping in our area continues to benefit from cool temperatures and above average rainfall. Here are a few general observations.
The amount of Japanese Beetles in our area is considerably less than previous years. This may be due to the larva form of this insect, a grub, being killed off during our extreme cold last winter.
Many Rose of Sharon and some Japanese Maples did not survive the winter. These plants are only hardy to approximately -15 degrees below zero, so when it gets colder than that, they may not leaf out in the spring. If you have plants that have no leaves on them at this point, they will probably never have any leaves on them. Now is a good time to remove those plants.
Overall, evergreen shrubs look considerably better than they did at anytime during this spring or even early summer. Dwarf Alberta Spruce and Junipers have made a tremendous come back since being effected by winter burn. Yews and Boxwood did not fare so well. Any evergreen branches that do not have green tips will probably never have green growth. You may want to remove these plants if the majority of the branches do not show any signs of green growth.
If the downspout that extends from the gutter on our roof has been buried in the ground, you should have a round green pop up in your lawn. The idea behind a buried downspout is that all the water from your gutter travels through the ground and then ‘pops up’ through the pop up drain and goes into the lawn area. Over time, the roots from the lawn often grow over the pop up and restricts the water flow. If you cannot find the outlet for your buried downspout, you can run water through it and look to see where the water puddles in the yard. Then you can use a sharp knife to cut away the roots around the edge of the pop up.
Slugs are often the culprit for holes in hosta leaves. A natural remedy for catching slugs is to place a shallow dish of beer near your hostas. The slugs will be attracted to the beer and away from your hostas.
The abundance of rain has resulted in much growth for the shrubs. The best time to prune shrubs can be generalized this way. Spring blooming shrubs can be pruned in the summer; summer blooming shrubs can be pruned in the fall or early spring. In general if a flowering shrub is much, much too tall, you can safely prune off about 1/3 of the plant at a time.
Kathleen Carr is the owner of The Growing Scene, Inc., a garden center and landscaping company. She can be reached by calling 815-923-7322 or tgsinc12@msn.com. Have a gardening question? Please contact her. She may address it in an upcoming column.
