Hosted by: Newell Nurseries

Sponsored by: Town & Country African Violet Society

Location: Newell Nurseries’ Glass House, located at
34071 Yucaipa Blvd, Yucaipa, CA 92399

Dates and Times:
Friday, May 11th, 10:00 am – 5:30 pm
Saturday, May 12th, 9:00 am – 5:30 pm
Sunday, May 13th, 10:00 am – 5:30 pm

Come for Violet Fun, Cultural Information, growing supplies, and of course,

Violet. LOTS of Violets!!!

For additional information and details, call (909) 794-2771, (909) 885-8260 or (909) 794-2686

Cleome gets its nickname "Spider Flower" from the exotic spidery-like flowers with long, waving stamens held on tall, strong leafy stems. It is one of the few annuals that look perfectly at home among shrubs and perennials. This South American native blooms in summer through fall.

Planted in mass or intermingled in your perennial garden, cleome can become quite tall in a good season. Give cleome full sun and regular water.

Oh, and get ready for attention from passersby. Everyone is amazed by this beautiful flower!

It is the Merry Month of May here (and everywhere else in the world, including Camelot). Where has the beginning of the year gone?

This can be a busy time in the garden. There possibly are still chores from the winter; the weather is finally beautiful, so plant, plant, plant; and with all of the new vegetative and bud growth, there are insect pests back in our gardens. Here are some tips for you this month. This is a lot to ‘chew off’, so get ready!

Planting
Annuals and perennials abound in the garden center. Come to pick your favorites but do a favor, if you will. Try a new plant in your garden this year (or several). It’s fun to watch a new plant grow, and you may find one that becomes a new favorite. You just don’t know until you try.

The annual and perennial tables are so full it’s next to impossible to give you a full list of everything. But just to whet your gardening tastebuds, here’s a starting list: alyssum, asters, coreopsis, gaillardia, gaura, daisies, heliotrope, marigolds, petunias, penstemons, pentas, phlox, phygelium, rudbeckias, salvias galore, yarrow, verbena, vinca, zinnia. And much more.

Veggie Growers: Summer vegetables are in. Beans, eggplant, many kinds of peppers, tomatoes, and squashes. And of course, herbs such as rosemary, oregano, tarragon, parsley, thyme, stevia, mints and more.

Feed and Fertilize
Use organic fertilizers such as Nurserymans Vegetable Garden on your vegetables.

Reward your roses with a good feeding.

If your camellias and azaleas are still blooming, hold off on the feeding. Did you know that if you feed camellias while blooming, you will lose all of the wonderful flowers and buds yet to open? It's true. These acid loving plants will need to be fed, but not until they have completed their bloom cycle.

Pruning
This is the time of year to cut back and shape your shrubs such as brugmansia, abutilon , hibiscus, tibouchina, etc. This spring cutback and shaping will help increase your flower quantity.

Canna foliage is beautiful right now. After they bloom, some suggest a cut back to the ground. You might leave the foliage for a while, but eventually, canna foliage loses its beauty. At that point, your courage may rise for the stronger cutback!

Deadhead your petunias, pansies, snapdragons, roses, etc. This encourages more flowering. Pinching back new growth on most plants encourages new branching and a fuller look to the plant. If that’s a look you desire, pinch away! And don't forget to cut/pinch back your mums.

Pest and Disease Maintenance
Encourage (or release) beneficial insects into your gardens. You can do this by increasing the plant diversity and giving them habitat in which they'll not only arrive, but stay for a while. We can help you with some plant selections.

Who are the most obvious pests in our gardens right now? Aphids and rose slugs. You have several choices for treatment. A couple choices are a more natural or organic approach; and then there are the synthetic chemicals. Remember that insecticidal spray controls are not selective and will kill all insects, good and bad.

That rose slug guy is a tiny little green larva that hangs out on the underside of your rose shrub leaves. They eat little circles out of the leaf, sometimes almost skeletonizing the leaf. Just remember, unless you are growing roses for show, we don’t usually grow them for the leaves. We grow them for the flower. So choose your "pest in the garden" battle wisely. Remember, you can scale up, but you can’t reverse the chemical “nuclear bomb” of insecticides. Keep reading.

Aphids can be "squirted off" of your rose buds, etc,, with water. Both aphids and the rose slug can be sprayed. We have products to deal with both.

Powdery mildew is popping up. Treat with a fungicide.

If you are in an area that had much rain all winter, with temperatures warming up, it is time to increase the garden and lawn watering.

Mulch, Mulch, Mulch.*

*We will always tell you to mulch. This does not mean mound up the mulch to 5 feet. It means continue to replenish the mulch and maintain a 2-4 inch blanket over your soil. So when you hear us singing the MULCH song, you know just what we mean!

Across the country, bees have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Entire hives set out on what was presumably their normal day work of collecting nectar and pollen, but they never returned to their hive. This phenomenon is termed Colony Collapse Disorder, not an unknown event. But this year, commercial beekeepers are alarmed because it is happening to an extraordinary number of hives.

What does this matter, you ask? Aren't honeybees just garden pests that fly around, seek out humans and sting, sting, sting? Well, not really. In fact, if a bee would sting you, that would be the end of its life. And keep in mind, honeybees only choose to sting when they are protecting themselves or their hive. Otherwise, they really have no interest in us whatsoever.

In reality, honeybees are absolutely necessary in our environment; they are nature's pollinators. They pollinate our flowers, and not just the pretty ornamental flowers in our gardens. So, although our beloved literary bear character Winnie the Pooh believes, "The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey...and the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it" (A.A. Milne), he's not altogether correct. Sorry, Pooh.

Honeybees are hard-working pollinators of the world's vegetable and fruit crops. You might think of them in this way...when their work is done on farms across the country, then they have time to seek out our flowering trees, shrubs and perennials in our gardens.

Commercial farmers have worn the hat of not only a farmer but also of a beekeeper for years. And there are commercial beekeepers maintaining hives and supplying them to farmers at the appropriate pollination times of the growing season. That is how very important this fantastic creature is to our economy and environment.

Read more about the hive losses at the following websites:

American Beekeeping Federation: Honey Bee Die-Off Alarms Beekeepers, Crop Growers, Researchers

LA Times: Flight of the honeybees

Don't be confused by all those letters and numbers! The N-P-K letters stand for Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium. (The “K” is the chemical initial for potassium.) On each fertilizer label, you will see the percentage of each of these primary nutrients in that fertilizer product. For example, a 10-20-20 fertilizer contains 10% nitrogen, 20% phosphorus, and 20% potassium.

These nutrients, called macronutrients, certainly aren't the only ones plants need, but plants use them in the greatest quantities. You'll sometimes hear the term "fertilizer ratios." This is simply the ratio of each to the other. Divide the numbers by the lowest number in the group of 3 and you will have the ratio. For instance, 10-20-20 would have a 1-2-2 ratio, and 15-15-15 would be 1-1-1.

Nitrogen is the nutrient most often in short supply in soils. It stimulates vegetative growth such as leaves and stems, and gives a lush green color to leaves. Phosphorus stimulates root growth, hastens flowering, and promotes increased disease-resistance, whereas potassium increases the size and quality of fruit and flowers, among other benefits.

The balance of these nutrients can be as important as how much you apply. For instance, a tomato may respond with lots of vegetative growth and few fruits if you give it too much nitrogen. If you give it too much phosphorus and potassium, and no nitrogen, the result can be a small plant that produces only a few tomatoes.

Other necessary secondary nutrients include magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca) and sulfur (S). Magnesium is the core chemical of chlorophyll in green leaves. Calcium is needed for strong cell wall formation and root growth. Sulfur acts together with nitrogen in plant cells.

And, not to confuse you, micronutrients are necessary as well. These are trace elements, present in very tiny amounts. Examples are zinc (Zn), manganese (Mn) and iron (Fe). Iron is also necessary for chlorophyll production.

If a plant has yellowing leaves, or chlorosis, the pattern of that yellowing is important for you to note.
• Yellow leaves that are smaller than normal – needs nitrogen
• Yellowing between the green veins – needs iron
• Veins lighter in color than the tissue between them – needs sulfur

Be sure to use a fertilizer that is specialized for the type of plant you are feeding and the right time of year for the application. If you are not sure, just ask one of us and we'll help you sort it out!

Joy is a seventh generation native Californian of Los Angeles. She started her own garden when she was 8 years old. Her parents fenced off the back third of their lot and neighbors gave her plants and helped her along the way. Both Mom and Grandma took cuttings and started any plant they wanted. Great Aunt’s garden was entirely from cuttings. Joy, however, did not inherit this skill! Her work life has now brought her to Newell’s where she can mix career with love of growing things. Joy loves animals as well as plants. Cats have become part of her family--she shares here home with lots of felines!!!