Well, No Mow May paid dividends this year. Last week I caught a swarm of bees in the bee trap I had set up at the store. I’ve now moved them to my bee yard in my garden at home and hopefully they will bee very happy. Later this summer I will be putting up some electric fence as I do not want any problems with a bear coming to visit, that is what happened to the last bees we had. I have a couple more swarm traps up and hopefully I can attract another swarm this year. Since catching the bees, I’ve had to mow my lawn twice just to get it all as it was so high that the first cutting cut ninety percent while ten percent of the stalks just laid down. Then a few days later after my hay dried, I cut again to mulch up the dry grass and cut the ten percent that put up a good fight a few days earlier. So catching bees was a success this year, now on to the problems.

The gypsy moth caterpillars are becoming even more of a problem now that they are getting bigger. I sprayed my fruit trees to control them there, but they are chewing my fifty foot high maples and oaks to pieces, literally. Every morning when I get into my truck the hood is covered with leaf pieces and caterpillar poop. Now I can’t spray fifty feet in the air with my little two gallon sprayer, but with Bt insecticide, bacillus thuringiensis, the product Bt is a living bacteria that can move on its own up the tree. So I can spray about twenty-five feet up and the Bt can do the rest on its own. Also with the heavy rain we had on Monday when that storm front came through, many of the caterpillars got knocked out of the trees and had to climb back up bringing the Bt with them as they went. There are many sprays out there that will control caterpillars but Bt is caterpillar specific and won’t harm other insects like bees. Also by spraying Bt now, you will be able to kill the gypsy moth caterpillars that are out now and the Bt will be dispersed by the time monarch butterfly caterpillars are out in late June through July. 

Another problem that has come to light in the last few weeks is peach leaf curl. Peach leaf curl is caused by an airborne fungus that can seemingly affect peaches, nectarines and other fruit trees overnight. I inspect my fruit trees at least every other day and one day my nectarine was fine and the next day it was all curled. Luckily there is a quick fix for the problem, we have an all natural copper fungicide spray that will usually cure the problem with just one application. I sprayed my nectarine last week and all the new leaves coming out are all normal. Now the leaves that were affected by the curl are not going to straighten out, but all new growth will be back to normal. If you want, you can pick off the curled leaves to make the plant more aesthetically pleasing, but it is not necessary, they will fall off on their own in due time. Now that I have more room for plants at my house, I am finding that I need to get prepared for all the problems I have been talking to customers about for years now.

And one last footnote, last week I wrote about not picking up fawns and baby birds and yet last Saturday we had a fawn stuck in a small storm drain in back of our warehouse. The junction box for the drain is only three cinder blocks high, twenty-four inches, but the fawn could not jump out. So one of my employees put on some gloves and gently reached down to pick the fawn up and place him/her back on solid ground. Momma deer was in the woods about thirty feet away watching this all unfold and gave a quick grunt to call her fawn back to her and the event was over. So in closing, I guess there are some circumstances where you won’t leave it there, if you care.