Elmms horticultural advice provides solutions to get the best from each garden.
For example, a common sight in gardens is where a variegated plant seems to be having an increasing amount of pure green growth gradually taking over.
‘Reversion’ as it is known and shown in the photograph below is where variegated plants ‘revert’ back to their pure green parentage state.
Careful, although sometimes more drastic pruning is necessary to remove all the green growth so maintaining the plant in its’ variegated state. If left, the variegated plant in time will eventually be totally green losing its’ identity as a variegated plant.
Elmms will provide sound horticultural advice on gardening problems and will gladly provide a cost to remedy the issue.
Lawns
Where possible stay off lawns in frosty/icy weather as damage to the grasses can easily happen leaving yellow footprints after the frost and ice has melted away.
Over time though the damaged lawn will recover!
Lawns suffering
Moss
Winter 2023 into Spring 2024 has brought exceptional prolonged and extensive rainfall to the area over much of the Winter period resulting in very wet, saturated and boggy lawns.
This has increased the amounts of moss growing within lawned areas to the point at some customer’s gardens its hard to now see where the blades of grass are!
With careful treatment it is possible to keep the moss in check using appropriate moss killing materials either in liquid or granular form whichever is appropriate for the location. There is also an appropriate brand which is safe to use and has no effect on pets and doesn’t stain hard surfaces if spilt onto them.
Leatherjackets
Reading through a lot of posts over this Winter where ideal conditions must have been present within lawns, damp and mild, so extending their feeding times, which in turn has enabled more to survive the milder Winter, for Leatherjackets to have caused extreme damage to lawns.
In my ten years of gardening as a sole trader and throughout my horticultural career I haven’t come across such devastation they cause until now!
One customer’s lawn has been destroyed through Leatherjacket activity eating through the roots and leaves of the grasses. Unfortunately a part of the small rear lawn is in shade most of the day due to the closeness of the house, adjoining garage and the lawn facing a northerly aspect which has in turn weakened the grass sward
The lawn five months earlier back in September was growing fine apart from dog urine patches across. the lawn and had been fed with Spring and Summer lawn fertiliser and mown every fortnight with the clippings boxed off and removed.
Presumably though due to low light and shade the grasses became sparser in places which allowed the infestation of Leatherjackets to take hold in a big way and causing the devastation it did within a few months.
Now there are treatments available called ‘Nemasys’ (natural leatherjacket killer) and can be used in the Autumn when the leatherjacket eggs have newly hatched and are very succeptable to the nematodes applied to the lawn. A follow up application can be made in the Autumn but the leatherjacket are much older and have a tougher outer skin which makes it hardener for the nematodes to infect. However the treatment exists as a method to help eradicate these unwanted and destructive larvae.
Whether the customer wishes to follow this method of eradication or resort other landscaping ideas remains to be seen.
