Whitish specks on the upper surface of leaves and dark spots varnish-like on the bottom are symptoms of Rhododendron Lace Bugs, Stephanitis rhododendri, and Azalea Lace Bugs, Stephanitis pyrioides, small insects with transparent wings on under-surface of leaves.. This insect hatches early in spring as the new foliage begins to mature and its numbers may build to damaging levels with successive generations. Lace bugs reach their peak in late summer and do their worst in sunny, exposed sites. Spiders are important predators of lace bugs and since they shy away from sunny, hot places, plant your azaleas where there is some shade. Insecticidal soap, horticultural oil, or a systemic insecticide may spare your azaleas the damage if applied in spring when the first hatchlings are noticed. Care must be taken to spray the lower surfaces of the leaves where the lace bugs live. Moving a plant to an area with more shade may alleviate the problem. Lace bugs are more prevalent on certain varieties. The following azalea cultivars have resistance to azalea lace bug: Dawn, Pink Star, Ereka, Cavalier, Pink Fancy, Dram, Seigei, Macrantha, Salmon Pink, Elsie Lee, Red Wing, Sunglow and Marilee. Rhododendron Lace Bugs, Stephanitis rhododendri, and Azalea Lace Bugs, Stephanitis pyrioides adults are about 1/8-inch long. The body is pale yellow. The lacy wings (very distinctive) are held flat over the back and are transparent with two dark spots present. The nymphs are black, spiny and smaller than the adults. The eggs overwinter partially embedded in leaf tissue. The eggs hatch in May. The nymphs mature into adults in June and lay eggs during late June and July. The second generation of nymphs appears in August. The overwintering eggs will be laid when these nymphs become adults. Lacebug adults and nymphs feed on the undersides of leaves by piercing the leaves with their mouthparts and sucking the plant juices. This causes a mottled, silvery or white discoloration, known as stippling, on top of the leaf where the chlorophyll has been removed. The undersides of leaves are covered with dark brown to black, sticky spots of excrement. Plant rhododendrons in shade to maximize the activities of beneficial insects. Varieties that are attacked by lacebug will recover if moved to shadier areas. They only get lacebugs in full sun. The National Arboretum warns: "Excess nutrients (fertilizer) may promote larger than normal populations of azalea pests like lace bugs Thrips, Thrips imaginis: This insect is a seasonal pest, causing most damage in mid to late summer. Signs of damage include silvering of the foliage and distortion of growing points and flower buds. The underside of leaves may be covered with excreta of the insect, which are like brown tar droplets. There are no effective specific biological controls and thus control can be difficult to achieve. Thrips are preyed upon by ladybirds and lacewings but these predators cannot control thrips in plague situations.

Okay, went to Lowes to get the hose reel that was on sale and couldn't find the thing at any store. I went to five before finally a manager just gave me a substitution. During my quest I bought: A really beautiful wind chime on clearance (2.57 for a large one!) Four quart size Achilleas for a buck each! Two Oenotheras on clearance and two hanging baskets full of dianthus for only 2.49 each. The baskets were worth that alone. Oh, and then I needed some shepherds hooks for the baskets and I went to Roses and bought them and 2 Caladiums and 4 Tuberous Begonias. The primrose is in the ground, but due to the rain everything else are still in their pots. Hope I get them in before my Mahonias that I ordered arrive, aquifolium, not Belei, don't worry!! I am so double done with any more plants this year. I hope the rain keeps up!!

By using only paniculatas in this bed you'll be basicly stuck with a monochromatic (white) scheme, though aging pink will be present at some point. Another inconvinience is that all paniculatas will bloom late in a season and almost at once. I have similar challenge and 'diluted' paniculatas with ES (for the mid season bloom) and azaleas/rhododendrons (for the early season bloom). With help of some perennials(mostly peonies and early daylilies) and spireas somehow I solved the bloomless void between az/rh and hydrangeas. However, right now there is still too much white/rose-pink there despite already aged to dark pink-red ESs. Now I'm thinking about another 'dilution', but in this case I'm looking for the contrasting texture and color of the foliage rather than a flower color. In my guestimate such type of borders should require at least 3 layers of plants to make it interesting the whole season and the depth of the border shouldn't be less than 12-15', IMO. Unfortunately I'm already over the limit in my Photobucket account and have to delete something in order to upload new pictures, so can't show what I'm talking about. re: overcrowding. Unless you want to feature individual collector's plant (in this case it should be planted as a solitary, period) nothing wrong in letting plants grow into each other for as long as they will be recognisable by their distinct characteristics (be it flowers or foliage) from the 10'+ distance. I guess that's what real estate people calling 'mature landscaping' :-))

Some azaleas are just naturally more 'leggy' than others; but more often it happens they are in a bit too much shade and stretch out, trying to reach sun. In the hopes that neither of those scenarios is your problem, try another session of pruning. Right now, go ahead and prune out any branch that is rubbing on another, and cut back any branch that is truly dead (a living branch flexes a bit when gently bent, dead ones usually snap off). Next session should be just after the blossoms get really ratty-looking. And don't worry about the forming buds: most azaleas spend about a month gradually making tiny new buds within the new cluster of leaves. Stand back and eye-ball the plant, trying to visualize the more rounded shape you want... I have trouble with this, so I use ties (from bread wrappers), twisting them on each branch where I think the cut should be, and then standing back to eye-ball again (and again, usually); neighbor uses cloth strips which actually are easier to see. Once the ties look like the general size and shape I hope for, I cut about 4" closer to the plant's center than the tie actually is. This is because over the following weeks the azalea is going to grow a cluster of small branchlets from that cut end. Azaleas are real nice about doing this :) but keep an eye on them for a few weeks after pruning: if you do find a cut end that's making a single instead of a cluster, try pinching off the green tip; that's usually enough to make the following new growth a cluster. Bushes that are basically a nice shape, but loaded with dead cluster-twigs need an in-depth pruning - expect to prune about 20% of the branches all the way back to a main trunk. I've found those masses of dead clusters seem to occur on bushes that have been "surface-pruned" often to maintain a particular shape or size [that's a nice way of saying somebody used hedge clippers instead of pruners]; the plants need to be opened up a bit both to let air and light in, and because the plant had so many cut ends that it made more tip-clusters than it could maintain over the winter, resulting in a sparse bloom. Try to remove some of the branches which have clusters leaning into any other branch's clusters - at least one branch [of every bunch] will need to be pruned back to the main stem. The finished effect doesn't change the plant's shape by much, but it does make the overall effect more open. Surprisingly, next year's blooms will likely be very showy! I have never managed to prune so severely that an azalea died (ah, yeah, I've tried... got an orangey one I really detest so I've practiced doing all sorts of "wrong" things to it); so you can expect that an established azalea is one plant that is difficult to over-prune -- although if you want to shorten the overall height and/or width by more than a third, there is a good chance some of the individual branches will die back a lot. No sweat, just prune them off next spring (sometimes they look dead in late summer but come to life the following spring, so give 'em a chance). Next year, you can refine your prunings... if the plant is a hearty grower, you may want to cut back 6" or a foot closer to center than looks good when eye-balled; or if there are some branches which act determined to be leggy, you can lop a couple off about a foot above ground-level. You can also divide the pruning sessions over about a month after bloom -- this is handy when you actually want to a very severe pruning (the rule of thumb is no more than 1/4 taken off at one time) because you can take a 1/4 off right after blossom-drop and a month later (those cut ends will have little leaves) take another 1/4 off! If you do something that drastic, don't forget to take good care of the remains, being sure to water often during the summer and feed with a mild azalea fertilizer. The final resort for plants that are really ugly, and not too shaded, and you aren't going to get too upset if they die -- is to cut the entire plant back to about a foot above ground level. Like a normal pruning, some/most cut ends will sprout clusters; unlike a normal pruning, some/many branches may die completely and there is a very real risk of losing the whole plant (or so I'm told, I haven't had it happen to any of my azaleas). The good part of taking the risk is that it's easier to keep the plant bushy as it recovers/grows, the bad part is that there is no way to tell just which branches will die back, so there is a potential for having a lop-sided plant for a couple years. wow! I didn't mean to be so long-worded; it's just easier to do the pruning than it is to tell how to do pruning!