We are into the BBQ season so you will want to have a beautiful lawn! Here are some handy tips to have your lawn looking its best for those BBQ parties or for kids to play on.

• Lawns should be aerated and dethatched as soon as they lose their excessive sogginess from our brief rainy season. Aeration can be done manually or by machine, but must remove a core of earth. This core should then be removed from the lawn. Do not use spikes to aerate, as they simply push aside soil and roots. Dethatching can also be done manually or by machine. When completed, the lawn should be mowed and any residue removed. While we generally recommend leaving grass clippings on the lawn, after dethatching, all clippings and thatch should be removed.
• Feed lawns with Master Green Lawn Food or Master Green Weed & Feed. For organic products try Dr. Earth Lawn Fertilizer or Concern Weed Prevention Plus.
• Apply Bayer Advanced Lawn Season-Long Grub Control or Beneficial Nematodes in May to control lawn grubs. (Note: If you are using herbicides to control weeds in your lawn, allow 2 weeks before and after nematode applications to encourage them to increase). Controlling lawn grubs now will prevent skunks and raccoons from tearing up your lawn in the late summer and fall. Beneficial nematodes are microscopic organisms which consume various destructive soil-dwelling insects, such as lawn grubs. They do not harm earthworms and are safe around pets and people, but they can be harmed by herbicides and insecticides.
• If your lawn shows holes one to one and one half inches in diameter, you probably have been infested with voles. They can be controlled with Wilco brand Gopher Getter number 2. (Don't use WGG number 1.)
• If you have had problems with Bermuda grass in your lawn, apply Turflon Ester, which also controls annual and perennial broadleaf weeds in established lawns. For crabgrass and some other weed grasses, as well as a host of other tenacious broadleaf weeds, use Weed-Hoe. For oxalis and broadleaf weeds, use Turflon Ester, a liquid which can be sprayed over entire lawns. Because oxalis is so tenacious, two applications may be needed. Check our collection of the Monterey line of weed control products. In addition to those above, Grass Getter can be sprayed over ground covers and shrubs to kill grasses growing around them.
• It's time to set mowers to summer levels: 2.5 inches to 3 inches for fescue and bluegrass lawns and 1.5-2 inches for Bermuda grass lawns.
• Spread seed or lay sod through May. Sod orders placed with Wegman’s usually take 2-3 days for delivery. Call us for details!

Just at the height of the blooming season Wegman’s offers you outstanding values on first quality plants. There is a huge selection of varieties and colors of roses. There is a rainbow of rhodies in bloom to choose from, too.

Climbing Roses
Climbing rose bushes and climbing roses do not actually climb like vines do. Climbing rose varieties don't attach themselves to whatever they come in contact with like ivy or grape vines do.

Climbing roses put out long and arching. vigorous canes instead. If you don't train these canes, they will form a huge, sprawling shrub. So in order to get roses to climb, you have to tie them to some sort of support, such as a wall, arbor, fence, trellis or post. The best way to tie roses that climb is by using green stretchable tape, sold in any garden center or nursery.
The most common types of climbing roses are the climbing offshoots, or sports, of hybrid teas and large flowered climbers, which bloom repeatedly all season long.

See all of our roses by clicking the Rose Gallery in the sidebar.

On a recent house call to identify a possible fungus infection on roses, Mr. Ed found a plague of tiny, orange and black snout weevils. The one-quarter inch long Rose Curculios are distinguished by their color and the piercing snout, which is about one-third the length of the body. The adults feed by piercing rose buds. If the rose buds are tiny at the time they are attacked, they will not open but become grey-colored, shrivel and drop off. Large rose buds may have 6 to 8 puncture wounds but when they open there may be 50 to 100 holes in the petals. Surrounding the holes, the petals will be discolored and the entire blossom tends to shatter. The larvae are minute, less than one-quarter inch long, and feed on the flower petals.

If the infestation is severe, as it was in this case, many of the flower trusses on the floribunda roses will have failed to open, be dead and show evidence of being pierced. Damaged rose petals may litter the ground. Hybrid tea roses are not so frequently infected but some had been pierced below the bud which caused the bud to nod and appear wilted. These buds will not open and should be "dead-headed." For some reason the curculios seem to have a preference for white and light yellow roses.

When large numbers of floribunda roses have been affected, they should be cut off and disposed of. Do not compost. All the roses in the garden should be sprayed with Malathion (2 teaspoons per gallon of water). Spray again one week later and a third time, two weeks after the second spraying. Then spray once a month. The Malathion spray will also take care of cucumber beetles, grass hoppers and katydids all of which all feed on roses. If you spray late in the day, there is less chance that you will be affecting the bees.

At Wegman's, we have not been seriously affected, probably because we began a prophylactic spray with pyrethrin six to eight weeks ago.

Dr. Earth Super-Natural Lawn Fertilizer adds life to lawns by providing a broad spectrum of beneficial soil microbes plus three strains of mycorrhizae. This ensures nutrients are made available to the grass roots more effectively and at a steady rate, even under stressful conditions (e.g., drought, low nutrient availability, poor soil structure). Use on new lawns, seed or sod, cool or warm season grasses. Controls thatch build up by digesting thatch in the organic debris layer produced by grass roots, stolons, and blades.