My wife and I created a garden in the back that has a problem. See pics.
My wife created this memorial garden (ok, she chose the plants, I did the digging.) which sits against the neighbor's fence. I note that this is in direct flow from the neighbor's downspout, which floods this area when it rains. We expected the plants to get plenty of water during rainy seasons, but it would run off, downhill (a 20% grade, it covers the whole back yard. This is the only level place for a garden.)
We did this June 18. I dug out the grass and moved it. We then put down some good garden soil the plants went into the ground the same day. (also used weed fabric and mulch on top.) There were some torrential rains this last weekend, but all the plants had been watered regularly before that day .
The last two days, we discovered our butterfly bushes were dying. My wife is quite knowledgeable about plants and this is just foreign to both of us. You can see that all the other plants are doing well, it's just the butterfly bushes that are not. (We put in a butterfly bush in our other house and it grew tremendously. It got over 6 feet tall, and was at the end of a downspout.)
Looking for some ideas of what could be causing this. Garden is approx 8-10 feet across the front. All the other plants are doing well, it's only the two butterfly bushes having issues.
Neighbor's downspout there in the side of his yard. You can see the green path of the water.
Over watering would be my first guess. Butterfly bushes are very drought tolerant but can't handle too much moisture and like well drained soil. If planting them there I would consider mounds to get them above the runoff water and into lower moisture soil.
Also, your butterfly bushes are planted way too close together. One adult plant alone could take that entire bed.
We had a butterfly bush at another location which seemed to get as much if not more water, but honestly, I'd go with anything right about now. My wife is beside herself over this. We will see about replacing them with something else. perhaps we can put the butterfly bushes elsewhere.
I'd appreciate help in identifying this woody vine and advice on eradication. It has a distinctive reddish stalk (or maybe trunk) with thorns. It grows to approx. 5', then bends to the ground, attaches and starts again. It has small leaves in 3s. (See the picture.)
I've cut them at the base, but that seems to cause them to split. My current plan is to cut them back and spray with Triclopyr or a mixture, adding 2,4-D. Is some other combination better? Would I be better off cutting the vine and spraying the cut or just spraying the leaves? Note that I have no issues in this area with other plants or vegetation; it's mostly leaves.
I'm in Connecticut.
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Hello,
I have a large pin oak tree in my front yard, and the canopy is noticeably thinner than normal. It is about 60-70 feet tall. The tree is directly over both my storm and sanitary sewer lines, so I know it is younger than the house (which is 80 years old).
As I have been racking my brain to figure out why, I’ve come up with three potential reasons. Here they are:
1) My next door neighbors had to replace their sanitary sewer line last year. The pluming company had to excavate a large trench in order to remove the old line. The trench was about 35 feet long and about 20-25 feet away from the trunk of the tree. I’m sure the trench ripped out some roots. Will these roots eventually grow back?
2) We had a late frost this spring in NE Ohio. I had several shrubs planted on April 8, when it was 80 degrees that week. The following week was a very heavy , wet snow that broke a lot of tree limbs. Would the tree have been budding at that time and the late snow hurt the buds?
3) I’ve been using a lawn company for feeding my grass and spraying a herbicide. I did some research on the ingredients in the herbicide, and it contained at least two that could potentially be harmful to oaks (depending on what article you read on the internet).
With all of that being said, do you think any of these reasons are more likely than the others to be the culprit? Do you have any recommendations on what I can do to assist this beautiful tree?
Thank you in advance.
06-29-21, 09:57 AM
