A Little Bug Control

Well I've learned something new....and there's a bit of back story here.

We have six giant hackberry trees on our lot, one of which hangs directly over our driveway. We had been told somewhere along the way that hackberries spit sap, which eats at the paint on your car (and we spend last summer with our cars covered in black sticky stuff), so we had thought we were going to need to cut the one by our driveway down. At the same time, we also thought that we were going to have to take two of them in the backyard down as well because they are very close to the house.

Now, I did get a quote to have all three trees removed.....and nearly had heart failure. It was going to cost us $5600(!!!) to get those trees taken down!!

This was the point where I started looking for alternatives, and someone suggested I speak with an arborist to find out whether the trees even needed to come down, or whether they could be trimmed back, and checked for general health. With this idea in my head, I started looking for arborists, and found Quality Tree here in Nashville (I'm not affiliated with them....in fact, they don't even know I'm writing about them!).

The arborist came and checked out the trees (I didn't even have to be there), and called me back with the prognosis: none....that's right, none....of the trees actually needed to come down.

What he did tell me was that all of the hackberries had been topped at some point. I don't fully understand why someone would lop off the top third of a tree, but I do know that it damages the trees. The arborist told me that one of the trees had developed a form of root rot, but that it wasn't nearly advanced enough to worry about removing the tree. He did, however, recommend that both trees up close to the house be trimmed to remove anything hanging over the house, any dead wood, and extra, unnecessary brush. Easy enough, and this process is far less expensive than removing even one tree.

As for what I learned, the tree over the driveway also didn't need to come down. Hackberries are extremely susceptible to aphid infestations. The black sap that was getting all over our cars is actually not sap. It's an aphid secretion called honeydew.

Nothing like having sticky aphid poo all over your car right?

Fortunately, the aphid problem has an easy fix: Merit. The arborist said he could do this for me, but that it would be less expensive for me to do it myself, and that it's a pretty easy process. All I had to do is get this merit stuff, mix it according to the directions, and pour it around the base of the tree. The tree soaks up the insecticide and the aphids die. The only thing I really needed to know is that this has to be done during March, well before the aphids start their summer-long party on my tree.

So off I went looking for this merit stuff. Home Depot didn't have it, but Bates Nursery did! I grabbed a bottle and headed home ready to kill me some aphids.

The directions were a little confusing at first, but I finally figured out that I needed to measure the circumference of my tree (easier said than done since my arms can't reach all the way around the tree!). Then, I needed to mix 1 ounce per inch of circumference with 1 gallon of water. Since My tree is (much) larger than 16 inches in circumference, I needed two gallons of this mixture.

Since my tree is 60 inches in circumference, I quickly realized I was going to need much more than the 32 oz. that I bought, so back to Bates I went for the gallon size. There are other brands, but this is the solution that I purchased:

I got out my 5 gallon bucket and got to mixing. The merit is a milky white substance.....

And it's actually not chunky....my bucket just had a little leaf debris from my fall cleanup.

I measured out 120 oz, mixed it with 2 gallons of water and poured it around the tree, covering two feed out from the base. Easy as pie. Oh, and this treatment should last a full year!

So has anyone else been killing some aphids? Tree trimming?

Introducing....A Blank Slate (Part II)

Man is it hot here! I don't know what the weather is like where you are, but we've been breaking records left and right here in Nashville - and since we haven't had rain in over a month now, things are looking pretty brown and crunchy outside. I've been out early in the mornings watering before it gets so hot that any water will evaporate before it can do any good.

But enough about the weather. Here is my new back yard!

The previous owner graded the lawn to run into the creek on the other side of the fence so the house, and in doing so, created this retaining wall that makes a nice patio space. We're planning to use something like cobblestones to eventually pave in this space. You can see (kind of) where someone had dumped a bunch of gravel to try to create a patio space, but the weeds have taken over since it was last taken care of.

You can see where all my plants were pretty unceremoniously dumped when we were hurriedly moving everything in. I've spread them out a little since then.

Here, you can see I was in a hurry to get at least some of my vegetables in the ground. The retaining wall has a pretty handy built in bed, so I've been gradually planting the veggies I started back in February, adding mushroom compost to the soil as I go to give things a little boost.

I do have to figure out what to do with the two scraggly rose bushes in the retaining wall. Any suggestions??

We do have a pretty awesome deck....

...That's built right up to this gigantic hackberry tree. It will probably eventually come down. You can't tell from the picture, but it (and one other tree back here) hangs over the house, and the other tree is even closer to the house than this one!

We also have (actually, that's a had now...I'll do a post on it soon) a gigormous fire pit. Seriously, this thing is like 7 feet in diameter. The previous owners could have roasted pigs in this baby.

The only problem is that the border is just random rocks piled up in a circle, and if you so much as tap them, the go rolling away (maybe a bit of a safety hazard if there's actually a fire going).

Just beyond the firepit, we'll put a toolshed and a compost bin.

And here is where (I think) I'm going to put some raised beds.

So there you have it....my new backyard!

Introducing.....a Blank Slate (Part I)

Whew! We are all moved in, and though we are still unpacking, I thought I'd share my blank slate of a yard with you all. I'm going to split this post into two in the interest of not writing the longest blog post EVER, so without further ado, I present to you my front yard.

First (and yes, I know this isn't technically the front yard), here's what our garage looks like....well....kind of. Right now, we'll call it Mt. Box ok?

Before you get too scared, here is a wider shot....no....we did not have boxes piled five feet high through our entire garage (just part of it).

Actually, at the bottom of that picture, you can see my first little indoor project happening (shelf painting!), but we'll talk more about that later.

Here's the front of the house from the end of the driveway. Not terribly exciting (yet), but we're getting there. The gigantic hackberry tree next to the driveway is going to come down probably this winter. Hackberries spit a sap that ruins the paint on cars, so one hanging over the driveway is really not ideal, especially since the garage is not going to stay a garage.

Not really sure what these little trees/bushes are off to the left of the driveway, but I am going to have to trim them back so they don't invade the driveway as well as getting the vines off of them.

Now this, I am pretty excited about. We have a lovely hibiscus bush in the front yard. You can see the end of the pretty purple blooms (it was covered in them a few weeks earlier).

There is all kinds of ivy growing up the trees in the front and back yards. We actually tackled getting it all off of the trees last weekend. The vines look great, but they bore into the trees and can kill them.

You can actually see the little tendrils the vines send out to attach themselves to the tree. No good!!

Moving on....I now present you with the ugliest lollipop ever.....

This guy has already been removed as well (I'll get some after pictures soon!). There are/were a couple problems with this: it blocks one entire window in the living room (not cool), it was growing up into the power line to the house (really not cool), and since it is so big and rotund, it also blocks the view of the path to the front door from the driveway (REALLY not cool, and a safety hazard, especially for when the hubs deploys again).

To the side of the front door, there is this wonderfully fragrant gardenia....

....and a not-so-wonderfully scraggly rose bush.....

....and that's it for what's in front of the house. Fortunately, my wonderful voice teacher and his wife have been saving some bushes they dug out of their front yard for us, so we will hopefully have something to put here soon!

Lastly, here is my awesome red front door! The porch needs to be power washed and repainted, but we've all got to start somewhere, right?

Whew! Hopefully I didn't totally bore you with all that. I am making my to-do list as I go along. What have you guys been up to? Did everyone have a great 4th?