Happy New Year!

Looking over the past year, gardening was a challenge for many local gardeners and homeowners. The biggest problem we had were the caterpillars. Many local deciduous trees and shrubs were stripped of their foliage by the invasion of the caterpillars.

Caterpillars can not kill a tree but they can put it in stress as the tree/shrub has to produce a second set of leaves. If the same tree/shrub gets its foliage eaten a few years in a row it could eventually die as the tree looses its health and strength.

The best thing we can do to help prevent the caterpillar problem is to be proactive. Look for the eggs and destroy them.

The eggs are in dark, shiny bands that can be found around the branches of the tree. Remove the eggs by scrapping them off the branch and place them in a sealed bag and then get rid of them. If you can't find the eggs the next best thing is to watch your trees and shrubs closely for the first signs of caterpillars. Ideally you want to get the caterpillars just as they hatch and stop them before they begin to travel and spread throughout the tree. It is also very important to apply 'Lime sulphur and Dormant Oil' to all deciduous trees and shrubs before they break into leave to destroy any overwintering pests and disease.

Red spider mite was another pest that faced many local homeowners due to our warm dry summer. They were found primarily on cedars but they also can be found on other trees, shrubs and on vegetables.

We had a problem with them on the eggplants. Spider mites are a sucking insect that take nutrients out of the plant and will place it in stress and eventually kill it. They are not very easy to see as they are very tiny, but you may have noticed the cedars were loosing their fresh green colour. You can help cedars this spring that may have been affected by spider mites by giving them an application of fertilizer on the foliage. On a cloudy day apply a liquid 30-10-10 or 20-20-20 to the foliage of the cedar following the manufacturers instructions. After a couple of days spray the cedar with plain water. Then two weeks after the first application of fertilizer on the foliage, do it again, following the same steps. Fertilizer applied to the foliage is fast working and will green the cedar up more quickly, than a slow release fertilizer, which is applied to the plants roots.

On a positive note, the 2013 gardening season was an excellent one.

We had a beautiful long summer and the vegetable garden flourished, as did the flower beds and container planters. If you did not get a chance to spade or till the garden soil in the fall then try to get to it early in the spring so that the larvae in the soil are exposed and killed, before the garden gets put in.

The seed racks are arriving at the garden centre over the next few weeks which makes this a good time of year to go through them at your leisure and start to plan for the 2014 growing season.

-Jos

Jos Van Hage owns and operates two Art Knapp home and garden Centres in Prince George:

• Highway 16 West at Kimball Road
• Highway 97 North at Northwood Pulpmill Road.