Q: I planted eight shrubs in my backyard in August. In late September, they blew over and broke the low-quality stakes I had put in to hold them up. I righted them and put better stakes in, but the roots were damaged when they blew down. Could I have prevented them from blowing down? — Daisy Callaway, Atlanta
A: I have good news and reassurance. You chose the perfect time to plant shrubs this year. There haven’t been any extended dry periods, and the soil has been warm up to December. Even though they may have been damaged by being uprooted, the warm soil and adequate moisture points to success.
One of the best things to do for a shrub is to plant it properly to begin with. You should always dig a planting hole big enough to spread the root system out. Many times I see roots that are wound around inside a pot. They should always be unwound. If you neglect to do this, the roots will be very slow to explore surrounding soil as they should. In your case if you had spread the roots originally, they would have been less likely to topple. It would be difficult to correct them now without a lot of work, so I think you’re better off leaving the shrubs alone to establish on their own.
Q: Something is destroying the foliage of my baptisia, and now the rosemary and pyracantha as well. It appears to be a sucking insect that removes the chlorophyll from the leaves. The back of the leaves are dirty looking. What do you think this is? — Karin Guzy, email
A: This sounds like whitefly damage because they are a common pest of pyracantha and baptisia. They congregate on the back side of leaves sucking sap from the cells. When there are a lot of them, many cells are sucked dry of chlorophyll. The sap they don’t digest is secreted as sticky honeydew. This coats leaves beneath the infested leaves and quickly turns black when the honeydew is colonized by sooty mold. Whiteflies are not big and they fly quickly when disturbed, but if you’re real slow about moving the leaves, you’ll see them underneath. Neem oil is a good spray because it suffocates the pests but leaves beneficial insects alone. The key is to cover the underside of the leaves with it. This can be difficult with a spray bottle that wants to spray upward in your face, but with deft usage of a short stick, you can fold the leaves over and the whiteflies will be exposed to the spray.
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