lavender

Not only did my lilacs start to drop their leaves right after they flowered but the apple trees are dropping their leaves early. A large elderberry is almost totally leafless. While this could be some sort of fungus or bacterial disease my guess is it is stress. There are too many different varieties acting in exactly the same way for it to be a single disease. We have had very high temperatures with torrential rains. Excess heat slows photosynthesis. The trees are so stressed out that they can't support leaves. The apple trees are holding on to their fruit but the fruit is small. The trees are just shutting down to preserve the integrity of the main body. It's sort of like hibernation. Some woody plants are just less susceptible to climactic conditions or are growing in an area that protects them from excesses. My white lilacs are fine but they are very old, very large and are somewhat shaded by the house.

Removing Japanese barberry from your yard isn't going to remove the tick population from your yard. One of the prime culprits for harboring the tick is the white tailed mouse as well as other mammals that live in burrows. The white tailed mouse is one of the prime carriers for the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease. The ticks and their offspring feed on the mice in the winter. You and the deer are summer food. The ticks like shade so that is where they congregate. You are just as likely to find them hiding in tall grass, hedgerows or deep woods. I got my first tick picking leeks not pruning barberries. I have no problem with the idea of removing barberries if they become invasive but I haven't seen it locally. It might happen but give that as a reason for removing them not some questionable study that counted ticks and counted barberries and decided there was a correlation. There are a million other factors out there that can affect tick populations. Did they count the mice and the deer that the ticks feed on? Fewer mice, fewer deer equals fewer ticks. Since the ticks only use the barberries for shade in the summer there isn't any reason that any other planting that produces shade won't work as an alternate. Are they going to remove their food source which would be more effective? This is like the masks. Let's find a scapegoat and use that as the solution to a complex problem. If you can't run an experiment that has controls and can be repeated with the same results then don't call it "science."

Kudzu? What planting zone do you live in? The stuff I am recommending is native to or grows in DuBois, PA which is a chilly zone 5. You might want to contact a gardening club or the Master Gardeners in your planting zone. You would then get practical rather than theoretical advice. I don't think kudzu would make it through our winters.

If you are looking for privacy you might consider some tall grasses like the Miscanthus grasses. They do reseed and they grow better if you cut the dead stuff back in the spring. It looks as that might be dappled sunlight so you might try some understory trees like dogwood. Mountain laurel might grow there or Clethra alnifolia aka summer sweet might do well. I have summer sweet growing with elderberry. That might work as well. There are native viburnums that like that sort of environment. I would suggest that you research thickets that will grow on a slope. That looks as though it might be an ideal situation for providing cover and food for wild life and birds. If you don't want to fuss with it native plants are best. OK I just realized that you said the trees are mostly gone. Most of the stuff I suggested will take some sun. You probably need to decide how formal a look you want. Anything formal will be more work. I'd go for a more natural look with shrubs and ground cover. Clumps of tall grasses would probably work as well. I hesitate to recommend them because they are take over artists and it takes a backhoe to get rid of them.

If you have an area where you can let a ground cover run undisturbed there are a number of things that might work. These are things that you can't kill and need no care which is what you want if it is a steep slope. There are other things that might look prettier but they aren't as hardy and will need care. Are deer a consideration? Check that whatever you plant isn't going to be fodder for animals. Creeping juniper....evergreen. There are various cultivars and it grows fairly fast. Likes sun or partial shade Winter creeper......sun or shade Kind of a woody vine. I have this one growing in full shade in what is basically shale fill. It's been there for years. Aegopodium or bishops weed.... I hate to recommend this because it is invasive but if you have a slope that you want to cover it will cover it. The variegated form is quite pretty and it will crowd everything else out. Be forewarned! Houttuynia or chameleon plant......This is another aggressive one. I grow it in my shade garden. No weeds get through it. It does have to be pulled up once in a while to keep it from crowding out the plants. It is brilliantly colored in the sun. Not so much in the shade. Likes moist soil. Cotoneaster........they come in creeping and more upright forms. Sun or shade Vinca....sun or shade. little blue flowers. fast growing. evergreen Pachysandra........likes some shade. fast grower Lambs ears....fuzzy gray and spreads quickly. Flowers are not very pretty but the bees love them. I've grown all of these and know they will grow here. There are other things like tall grasses but you specified creeping plants. I've also got a sedum that spreads like crazy and something like that might be a possibility as well. Depends on what kind of look you want.

It's been growing near our place for years. Nobody is eating it as far as I can see. I handled it when I keyed it down to identify it and had no reaction to the plant. It does look a bit like Queen Anne's lace so before you let your kids pick pretty Queen Anne's lace make sure that little black/purple flower is in the middle of the inflorescence. Just keep in mind the mushroom pickers mantra, "There are old mushroom pickers and bold mushroom pickers but there are no old, bold mushroom pickers." The same apples to those who go hunting wild food.

Peppers and eggplant doing well this year. Planted way to much cabbage. Don't know what I was thinking. Both summer and winter squash off to a rough start. Doing better now. Broccoli and cauliflower iffy. I think our summers are getting warmer.

Honey bees are a non-native species that were imported in the 1700's There are 4000 native species of bee in North America. They too pollinate. Sometimes we have to put these things in perspective.

Wish I lived next to your mother. I saw a groundhog up a tree here once. Thought I was hallucinating. I guess they can climb quite well.

No deer or groundhogs?

Looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Many of the plants we grow in our gardens are poisonous. You can't eradicate them all. Don't eat the weeds or the garden plants if you don't know what you are doing. A word to the wise. Queen Anne's lace blooms much later and has that little black/purple floret in the center. Enjoy it. It is very pretty.

That is attended. Wish spell check didn't think it knew what I want to say better than I do. Thanks, again to all who ATTENDED.

Thanks to all who addended. We sold tons of plants!

Just a reminder that the Down to Earth Garden Club plant sale starts Friday, May 21 from 7:00 am to 5:30 pm. On Saturday, May 22 it will be open from 9:00 am to 12:30pm. We have around 700 perennials of all sizes. Some of the plants have been in the pots for more than 2 years and are overgrowing the pots. We did not have time to repot them. They will be sold by the pot size so you will be getting the expensive, the exotic or the rare for the same price as the more common plants. Prices start at $2 and top out at $7 for 10 inch and larger pots. There is a nice selection of perennial herbs this year. There will also be some succulents that are appropriate for fairy gardens or succulent planters. They were grown for library programs that were cancelled due to Covid. The list is at www.downtoearthgardenclub.org It will be finalized tomorrow although there will probably be more plants coming in the day of the sale. These plants will grow in your yard as they have been growing in our yards. Nothing is brought in from outside. We have been promised some cuttings and other odds and ends that will be given away with purchases. Please do not ask us to hold plants as the people manning the sale changes every 2 hours and don't have the time to keep lists of what belongs to whom. If you leave plants that have been paid for it is at you own risk. As usual all funds go to taking care of the beds, pots and window boxes that the club maintains in town, on the Beaver Meadow Walkway, on the embankment by Penn State and at Parker Dam or to fund programs for the community. Email downtoearthgardenclub@hotmail.com with questions.

It is probably a sure thing that the "big box" stores aren't smuggling plants in from China especially this one. Nardina has been here for a very long time. I think this all came from a kill of a dozen or so cedar wax wings that were found to have eaten nardina berries. This is the best explanation I could find. It comes from Cornell University. "Nandina berries actually have a low toxicity, but they can be lethal to cedar waxwings specifically because their feeding habits differ dramatically from that of other birds, said Rhiannon Crain, project leader for the Habitat Network with The Nature Conservancy and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "Other birds don't eat as much or as rapidly as cedar waxwings," said Crain. "Cedar waxwings completely stuff every possible part of their body with berries. They will fill their stomach and their crop with berries right up into their mouth until they can't fit another berry inside of them." The full article is here https://www.treehugger.com/nandina-berries-cedar-waxwing-4863712 It is an interesting article that tends to temper these over zealous attacks on specific plants because of their toxicity. Many plants are toxic. The deer eat off my rhododendrons every year but I have yet to find a dead deer. They don't touch the monkshood or the foxglove though. Animals have a way of adapting to nature. Occasionally you get one that is too dumb to survive but that is true of any species mankind included.