Avoid Wasting Water or Money - Irrigation Tips from Crabapple LandscapExperts

To increase efficiency, Crabapple LandscapExperts suggest you have us overhaul the sprinkler systems on the properties you manage. Never again have the sprinklers konk out or waste water by running during a downpour or when the soil is already soaked. Crabapple will:

Check the timer settings against the water output with the twin goals of saving both water and money

Replace the backup computer battery – for maximum security

filter

Clean all the filters in the irrigation system – to eliminate clogs

Evaluate all pressure regulators

Reposition all sprinkler nozzles to upright and fully functional – including those blocked by foliage growth, broken, tilted, sunken, or facing the wrong direction – to efficiently target lawns, trees and shrubs, color beds or transplants

pressure regulators (Clemson, Brian Smith) 

Check for leaks and breakage along the lines during the sprinkling cycle -- in order to save water

Let Crabapple suggest a renovation or upgrade to the irrigation system in order to increase water savings and decrease wasted water. Crabapple LandscapExperts can add water sensors, evapotranspiration controllers, or soil moisture sensors

Saving both water and money earns big results when reporting to management.

Tomato Troubles Solved! Prize-winning Tomatoes

Everyone grows a couple of tomato plants each summer, right? Home-grown tomatoes hot off the vine are one of the joys of summer in metro-Atlanta. Crabapple LandscapExperts explain that tomato troubles can be caused by diseases, insects, and cultural problems/nutritional deficiencies.

Start Right! Best Practices

• To avoid troubles and maximize tomato production, plant in a sunny spot (9 or 10 hours of sunlight) 
• Choose a spot where tomatoes have not been grown before. 
• Dig lots of compost and organic matter into the soil beforehand. 
• Get several different varieties and plant them deep- up to their first true leaves, because adventitious roots will form along the buried stems. 
• Water the roots thoroughly and mulch with a 2-3 inch layer of straw, wood chips or pine needles to maintain even moisture levels.

Fungus Diseases

• Tomato blight- black spots on the lower leaves, yellowing and sunken gray spots on tomato fruits, or girdling of the stem causing plants to collapse at the soil line. 
• Early Blight = Alternaria 
• Late Blight = Phytophora
• Gray Mold. Keep water off of the leaves, provide lots of sunshine and space for good air circulation to reduce Botrytis. Pick up diseases leaves from the ground and bag them.

Bacterial Diseases

• Whole plants wilt quickly. If tomatoes keel over in the space of 24 hours, bacterial wilt is probably clogging up the vascular system. No cure; just pull them up and bag them, wash your hands, then plant fresh, new tomato plants in another location.

Tomato Hornworm

Insects

• Chewing Insects chew holes in the leaves. Pick off Tomato Horn Worms or other caterpillars and destroy.
• Sucking Insects like tiny aphids or thrips attach on the underside of the leaves. Wash off with soapy water (repeating if necessary).  

Blossom End Rot

Cultural Practices/Nutritional Deficiencies

• Blossom-end Rot. Tomatoes turn dry and hard at the blossom end (the end away from the stem). Add calcium in the form of pulverized or pelletized lime and dig into the root zone around the plants.
• Yellowing leaves. Add fertilizers high in nitrogen, like alfalfa meal, well-rotted manure or Epsom Salts. 
• Yellow leaves with green veins.  Spray the plants with iron chelate to improve the iron content.
• Splitting fruit. Uneven watering is the culprit here, or sometimes too much rainfall.
• Sun scorch. Leaves are not shading the ripening tomato fruits. Allow more leaves to grow.

How do you like your tomato sandwiches? White bread or toasted? Mayo or Miracle Whip? 

Call your Crabapple LandscapExperts Rep if you have questions, or post your questions on our Facebook Page and we will get them answered! https://www.facebook.com/CrabappleLandscapeExperts

Keep Plants Watered This Summer!

 Crabapple LandscapExperts offer some watering tips to residents of communities whose public grounds we manage. 

How to Water

Water the roots, not the leaves

Water deeply to the proper soil depth for the root ball

6 to 8 inches of the root zone should be moistened

Methods of Application

Open-ended hose directly on the soil

Watering can without the rose (sans the sprinkling tip) 

Soaker hoses

Plants Need Air AND Water

Too much water is as harmful as too little.

Automatic shutoff timers are very useful

Use over-ride on completely automatic systems if rain provides water

Plants in Special Need of Watering

Blueberries need water as they ripen

• Plants with swelling fruits, such as blueberries, tomatoes, cucumber, watermelon, zucchini 
• Newly planted or transplanted plants – roots have not settled into the soil in the new location yet and dry out quickly. Supply extra water to transplants for 6 months to a year, depending on size (keep supplying water to large-calilper trees or shrubs for the longest period) 
• After bloom- Cut plants back to remove the old flowers and eliminate the formation of seeds (dead heading). Then they may give a second wave of bloom as a reward!

When to Water? Timing of Watering

The Crabapple Team waters early in the day

Do not use an oscillating sprinkler over the lunch hour -- too much evaporative loss of water at high noon

Do not wet the leaves after work in the evening – fungus disease spores germinate in standing water on the leaf overnight, so make sure they go into dark dry

Sensible Water Use

Water Breaker Nozzle 

Use a water breaker nozzle or soaker hose

Apply organic mulch after planting, as this acts as an insulation and reduces water evaporation

Recycle milk jugs by filling them with water and setting next to new transplants or plants in small containers for emergency spot watering 

20-gallon Tree Gator

Outfit expensive transplanted trees with a water bag for trees such as the 20-gallon slow-release TreeGator or Oasis Watering Bag

A Tree, a Bush or a Shrub

Tree Forms

Trees and shrubs come in different shapes and sizes, and have different designations, although all are woody ornamentals. Crabapple LandscapExperts take advantage of this variation in our landscape planning. 

The word ‘tree’ brings to mind a tall, woody, permanent (perennial) plant with a main trunk and heavy branches forming a raised crown of twigs and leaves. Both gymnosperms (cone-bearing) and angiosperms (flowering plants) can grow in a tree form. Southern Sugar Maple is a typical example with a single trunk and a rounded crown.  Southern Magnolia offers evergreen color and fragrant flowers in spring. 

[The illustrations are from the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service bulletin, Native Plants for Georgia. ]

Contrast this with a bush or a shrub. Scratch that; the term ‘bush’ is strictly non-scientific and colloquial, and although in conversation people use the words interchangeably, it is shrubs we wish to discuss.

Shrub forms 

The gestalt or overall concept of a ‘shrub’ is a low, woody, perennial plant with several woody stems coming up from the ground, and is very different from a tree. An extreme example is a dwarf Helleri holly with a characteristic mounding or pillowing habit, making this compact, multi-branching shrub with its mushroom shape distinctive in the landscape. Perhaps a more typical example of an upright, multi-branched shrub would be a boxwood.

But as Crabapple LandscapExperts know, Nature does not like black and white but prefers countless  shades of gray. And so there are multi-trunked trees like Birch and Willow, and also low-growing "bushy" trees that branch near ground level such as dissected-leaf Japanese maples. 

Multi-trunked, low-growing Dissected-leaf Japanese Maple 

Tall single-trunked trees

As well, there are shrubs that can be grown with only one trunk like tree-form Hydrangeas or even Crape Myrtles. Some shrubs are very tall  such as the lily-flowered Magnolias or Serviceberries (Amelanchier) 

Trees are permanent fixtures that define the landscape and offer shade, windbreak, ornament and even fruit. Shrubs anchor the landscape with their multitude of sizes, forms, leaf- and twig-colors and flowering habits. Evergreens in either category provide stability and winter color. Each has an important role and Crabapple can help you care for them so that they will increase in beauty over time. 

Digging Deeper 
There’s a mind-blowing discussion at http://www.nativetreesociety.org/multi/multitrunk_trees3.htm  

Stop Variegated Plants from Reverting to Plain Green

Variegated Hosta

Plants are green because of green chlorophyll molecules within the leaves that capture light energy from the sun and transform it into sugars and elaborated carbohydrates for plant growth. This is known as the process of photosynthesis.

Trachelospermum
Snow N Summer

However, attractive, ornamental landscape plants with variegated foliage have areas of white or yellow (or sometimes pink or other) that are lacking this green chlorophyll. The absence of chlorophyll means photosynthesis levels are decreased, and this can put stress on a plant. The straight green foliage is better adapted for growing and thriving.

All-green lacking variegation can
overwhelm the shrub hedge. 

This simplified version explains why variegated plants are often not as vigorous as their plain green forms (consider slow-growing green-and-white pineapple mint v.s. vigorous all-green apple mint, or variegated Chinese privet v.s. plain-green privet).

Crabapple LandscapExperts will prune out any leaves or branches that have reverted to green as far back as needed until the variegation resumes. This may involve pruning back to the base when necessary, or to the variegated region on a branch. The LandscapExperts know it is important not to delay, since the all-green shoots and leaves can grow to overwhelm the plant and turn it solid green if neglected.  Call your Crabapple Rep for advice at 770-740- 9739.

Green has almost taken over.
Call the LandscapExperts quick!  

          

Eliminate all-green via selective pruning
with hand pruners

Light Pollution: Landscape Plants Affected by Bright Advertising Lights

Trees affected by light pollution

Bright golden yellow light emitted from advertising bill boards or street lights can adversely affect landscape plantings. Few of us give thought to “light pollution”, but three-fourths of Americans grow up without having seen the Milky Way. Laser light shows and fireworks have replaced the wonders of the starry sky. Human health can be affected by a lack of darkness, and other natural systems ranging from migrating birds to nesting sea turtles to disrupted cycles for oak and sycamore trees next to billboards are also becoming confused and threatened.

Bright advertising lights are not the same as landscape lighting. Ornamental landscape lighting is not intense enough to damage plantings. Benign types of landscape lighting include fluorescent, incandescent, low voltage, mercury vapor or metal halide lights.

Plant Symptoms resulting from bright intensity of high-pressure sodium lighting

• Disrupted life cycles 
• Accelerated plant growth 
• Increased leaf size 
• Faster flowering and fruiting 
• Shoots that over grow, especially those nearest the light 
• Delayed dormancy 
• Leaves triggered to sprout too early 
• Leaves triggered to hang on late, beyond the normal growth period 
• Spring die-back resulting from delayed dormancy the fall before 
• Clubroot development in some plants (cabbage) 
• Alters the migration of night pollinators of landscape plants 
• Insect decline due to “fixated or capture effect” of lights on insects  

up-lighting is bad

 Crabapple LandscapExperts can help you with a solution. We can install deflectors that will direct the lights away from your plantings. Just telephone your Rep at 770-740-9739.    

Digging Deeper

The International Dark-Sky Association http://www.darksky.org/about-ida mission is to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting. Their PDF is informative: http://www.darksky.org/assets/documents/education/MiniPageLightPollution.pdf

Images thanks to http://faculty.northgeorgia.edu/jjones/astr1020home/lightpollution.html

20 Top Orange Flowers for Atlanta Landscapes - Choosing Orange Flowers for the Garden

Orange is an out-of-the-ordinary color for flowers in the landscape, but Crabapple LandscapExperts have developed quite a list of Orange Flowers for metro-Atlanta Landscapes, The color orange is light, brilliant and eye-catching, moving forward in the landscape and really attracting attention. 

Fall-Planted Spring Flowering Bulbs 

Orange Tulips 

Several bulbs come in a rainbow of colors but orange is a little more unusual choice for the landscape. 
Orange Hyacinths like Gipsy Queen are early bloomers, as are orange and yellow or orange and white daffodils. A favorite is Jet Fire, a miniature landscape Narcissus with an orange trumpet and yellow recurved petals that increases or multiplies rapidly from year to year. Orange Ranunculus comes in beautiful double forms, while tall Gladiolus are also pretty in orange as are the unusual Frittillaria.  

Spring

Although a woody shrub, orange native azaleas are fragrant, deciduous and unusual in metro-Atlanta landscapes and should be used more often. These hardy shrubs can fill the landscape with fragrance. 

California Poppies are spring annuals that often self-sow after the initial planting.  

More typical orange, spring-flowering herbaceous perennials include the Blackberry Lily or Belamcanda, along with Red Hot Poker or Kniphofia and Primroses or Primula that come in many shades including orange..
.   
Summer

Asiatic Lilies

Lilies- Asiatic and Tiger Lilies are planted from bulbs and enliven the landscape. Plant some garlic cloves when installing to repel chipmunks and pine voles and keep them from eating the succulent bulbs. 

Remy Martin Rose

Roses - there are plenty of orange roses, ranging from coral through orange through pumpkin to red-golds. Crabapple chooses disease-resistance whenever available. 

Triple Orange Daylilies

Marigolds - small French or large African - are annuals and readily available at any plant shop and bloom reliably all summer. . 
Daylilies are one of the easiest to grow, long-lasting perennials for sun or shade and wet or dry conditions, and while orange is the original "wild" color, there are many options such as ruffled edges, diamond-dusting, picotee or other markings. 

Lantana

Lantana 'Miss Huff' is a hardy selection of the shrub for metro-Atlanta. 
Butterfly weed is also known as Milkweed or Asclepias tuberosa and is important to plant for Monarch butterfly larvea to feast on. Other familiar orange perennials include Geum, Helenium, Tithonia and Cosmos. 


Autumn 

Dahlia

Dahlias, grown from tuberous roots, are available in a wide variety from large Cactus style to small pompom sizes and varieties with many oranges. Other plants that flower into the fall include Gerber Daisies, perennial 
Hibiscus and Flowering Maple or Abutilon. 

Foliage Color
aPerhaps most beloved for its brilliant fall color, Sugar Maple foliage is a bright contrast with a blue sky. Closer to earth is the riotous fall color of Fothergilla. 

Vines 

Bignonia Tangerine Beauty

Crossvine or Bignonia blooms in spring and smells like "mocha",  while the Trumpet Vine or Campsis blooms in summer. Coral Honeysuckle vine is not invasive or aggressive. All of these orange tubular-shaped flowers attract hummingbirds.