Wonder what causes lichens and white-out bark on Crape Myrtle Natchez? The usually cinnamon-brown trunk became whitish-cinnamon-brown since I planted it last year in July and watered a lot to make sure survival the hot weather planting. Will the bark brown again? Regarding lichens, I bought these trees as I was told that lichens do not grow on Crape Myrtle Natchez, particularly 'Natchez', but the upper branches of all of them have a lot of leafy lichens.

They are a scale specific to crape myrtles. First seen in Texas over a decade ago, and slowly spreading northward. Crape Myrtle Scale was first seen in OK in Ardmore in 2012. It made the news here around that time, but I haven't seen it mentioned locally since then. Let me find and link maryl's other thread about it. I believe neem oil isn't effective, but I don't remember if I read that somewhere, or if maryl told me that, or if someone else told me that. Since it is relatively new, horticulturalists and ag researchers are still working on finding an effective control. Obviously it is better to catch it early, but hindsight is 20-20 and once it spreads, a person is really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Since maryl mentioned the infestation on her plants, I now check mine daily....not that I am paranoid or anything. Original Post on Crape Myrtle Scale I almost never see scale here on anything, even when a scale outbreak of a certain kind (like redbud scale, for example) seems commonplace across Oklahoma. I don't know if we have some sort of beneficial insect that feeds on scale here, or what.

Our heater came on last night, Jennifer, and this morning. Oh you have dresses, don't you? Of course you do. LOL The strawberries at school are stretching up, too. I ran in this morning to see how things looked (wet in the low spot, but great everywhere else. And then back here to mow, and then weeded a bit. But on days that I mow, I mostly don't do a lot of other stuff. And sometimes NOTHING else. Garry had to get under the deck and put a cinder block under the steps supporting beam, as the steps had sunk some on one side. That was just about an all day project. Now we need to go get a couple pieces of lattice. And I need him to get the deck power-washed so I can get to painting. I am shocked--rain tonight and in the morning? Wow. I had a BUNCH of petunias coming up in the wheelbarrow. This morning I noticed they were all stripped to the stems. What is odd is that I have larger petunias in many other containers and they are untouched. I sure hope they STAY untouched! Do any of you have any idea what could have stripped those? It was a great day for mowing, but every time I went out just to sit, too chilly, so then I'd have to go walk around. There's not much action in terms of color. Stuff is happening very slowly. Verbena bonariensis, spider wort, hollyhock zebrinas are filling in, and the nicotiana, petunias, astilbes, and rose campion are JUST beginning. The hydrangeas are enormous, but taking their sweet time to bloom. Since they've been here (this is their fifth year), this is the latest they've been; usually by now they're in full bloom. I'm kinda liking this. I was looking at photos from 2 yrs ago. We are a couple weeks behind we were then. All's good out in the vegetable beds. I am a little freaked out with the flower beds. Remember, I panted SO many things last year. Sort of knew this could happen. . . . I see stuff coming up. Not remembering what I planted. Being fairly certain what's weeds and what's not. BUT just because I realize something is not a weed, doesn't really mean I have any idea what it is! There's a clumping plant out there--an obvious member of the mint faily (wow! Way to narrow it down, right? LOL) But it has no scent whatsoever. Rule out most herbs, right? The tiny worrisome part is that it is also sprouting in the veggie raised beds. . . What did you do now, Nancy! I know I have hyssop out there, several basils, but what else, no idea. No excuse for being in this position. Oh, wait. I have a list of stuff I planted out there in all the beds. I will have to retrieve and figure it out maybe. THIS year I was very careful to plant the labels with the plants. And then got the green beans mixed up with the okra, and now I'm not sure which is which. No matter--they're in styrofoam cups. I expect they'll let me know who is who. I soaked them all first, so they're sprouting up in record time--like 3 day was the earliest. I had ordered five aster tataricus from this obscure (obscure to US in OK--might be famous as all get-out in northern CA) nursery called Digging Dog Nursery. I ordered them in February. When I researched them and searched for sellers, this was the first one I found after much time looking. So it was a complete crap shoot. Then my debit card had a couple unathorized charges in Feb/March, so ordered a new one. Got an email from DD that my number didn't work; didn't see the email until maybe 7-10 days after they sent it. So called them frantically with new number. Then nothing.. . . 7-10 days later, got a voice mail from them saying perhaps they got the number wrong, could I call them. Well it was in the middle of a bunch of other stuff--plants for the school, phone calls from church people, and some family stuff. I totally forgot. But when the plant didn't arrive about when they should have, I called the nursery and wondered what the status was. She reminded me she'd left me a voice mail. I tell ya, friends, I am losing it!! BUT!! My plants arrived two days ago. They look healthy and perky. Do you all remember when I SO wanted my burn weed (which Jason identified correctly, of course) to be the aster tataricus. Well. At least the burn weed led me to the aster. I'm excited to see how it does. https://www.finegardening.com/plant/tatarian-aster-aster-tataricus Isn't it a riot to see the pains we all go through to get the plant of our dreams!! And of course, it's a toss of the dice.

Jennifer, Yes, Tim's family did come back to visit, several times, and I don't think we ever had weather that hot again during one of their visits, but I also think they were smarter in future years and came in June, having learned our hottest weather tended to be in early August. Yes, the plant available water on that map is very dismal. I'm thinking that some parts of OK are very much in danger of slipping into a flash drought and, if rain doesn't fall, they may end up in drought soon. Oooh, a new Drought Monitor was released yesterday. I wonder what it shows? So, I went and looked to see what it shows....and it shows the part of SW OK I was thinking of is now in D-0, as indicated by the color yellow, and this is not technically a drought stage, but is considered pre-drought. We'll have to watch the map weekly and see what happens with them because some of us have conditions that are not too far behind theirs. Here's this week's Drought Monitor Map: Oklahoma Drought Monitor Map Most purchased soil is inferior quality no matter what the supplier tells you, and it needs a lot of work to turn it into good soil. This is why we don't purchase soil and instead just work to add organic matter to what we have. You know, if you add 8" of organic matter (not all at once because the tiller couldn't work it into the ground all at once) to the soil, you've raised the soil grade 8" and then can build your new edging around it to hold it in place. That's what we did. Yes, it is a slower process, and buying enough organic matter to add 8" at one time is cost-prohibitive, but you're getting better quality stuff. Tim and I decided long ago it was better to spend our money on good quality stuff than to buy crap soil (we already had our own crap soil, after all) and I'm not sorry we did it that way. I know people who have bought what seemed like good soil and brought in all sorts of stuff they didn't want....nut sedge, too many various weeds to count, soilborne diseases and even root knot nematodes. If we were building new beds nowadays, we'd do it hugelkultur style, and wouldn't even have to purchase amendments, but our first couple of years here we bought bags and bags of Black Kow, mushroom compost, Texas greensand, lava sand, dry molasses, soil conditioner (a blend of pine bark fines and humus) and more. Once I got a good-sized compost pile going, we didn't have to buy much, but it took a few years for me to get a huge compost pile operation going that would produce enough compost for a large garden. Friends gave us old spoiled hay, which helped a lot in the early days, and Fred gave us cow manure once, but it did bring in a gazillion weeds, and I never wanted to use local manure again...and have turned down all subsequent offers of it, especially since herbicide carryover became such a huge issue. One thing about soil-building is that it is never ending, since heat eats compost (i.e. makes it break down quickly). Going no-till has reduced how quickly our organic matter breaks down, because we aren't fluffing up the soil with a rototiller and introducing fresh air, which then helps compost break down more quickly. Still, it shocks me how quickly soil reverts back once its organic matter breaks down. I added 4-6" of compost to the front (southeastern) corner of the garden in the winter/spring of 2018 and had gorgeous soil there, after doing the same thing in 2017. Guess how that soil looked at the beginning of this season? Like I'd never added any organic matter to it at all. That is frustrating. There's no way I can add 4-6" of organic matter to every bed every year, so I just do the best I can and hope our heat doesn't eat up the organic matter too quickly. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm trying to replenish soil that was conventionally farmed, so it had nutrients taken out of it without having organic matter given back to it for decades, and that sort of restoration is slow. It is not weird to be thinking of Garden 2020. The best time to plan for next year is this year when things are fresh in our minds. I've been planning for 2020 since at least May. Rebecca, Your plants look like they mostly have Septoria Leaf Spot with maybe just a tiny touch of EB on a couple of leaves. Both have been incredibly common this year thanks to all the moisture and humidity. I do not know why it is not working its way upward the traditional way, but had the same thing on some of my plants this year too. Larry, My pepper plants stalled for a week or two, so I watered them like crazy and they quickly bloomed and set a lot of new peppers. I was relieved that all they apparently needed was more water than they were getting. I'm so pleased to hear that the highway department showed respect for your zinnias. That is just so awesome, isn't it? I really think most people nowadays are trying their best to do the right things to help out the bees, butterflies and pollinators. I've noticed our highway guys delay mowing as long as possible to let as many flowers live as long as possible and set seed before they mow. Poppies reseed very well, but in the pastures where there is a lot of competition, the amount of reseeding drops each year. I suspect we could plow up the front pasture and a billion poppy seeds would sprout because they are lying there under layers of thatch, but we've never tried it. I just overseed with poppies every few years to ensure we keep the poppies going. In the garden they reseed just fine, despite my heavy mulch. Jacob, The insurance premiums for young adult males are ridiculous, aren't they? Our son always has been a careful driver. He had one minor accident as a teenager...slid off a gravel driveway and hit a tree. He and Tim fixed the car themselves (it was just minor stuff) because it was cheaper than going through the insurance company and having them raise his rates. Later on, he had a major accident on his way to work, but he was in his late 20s then and it didn't make his insurance premiums rise nearly as much as it would have if he'd been 25 or younger. Enjoy the camping trip. Our weather still is slightly cooler than normal, but the temperatures are rising daily and the heat really cranks up next week, and we'll end next week with high temperatures near 100, as usual. I need to get out there and work in the garden while it still is cool, but am having a hard time getting motivated. I noticed today that the ground near our house is cracking, which is something we try really hard to avoid, though we ignore the cracking soil everywhere else. So, I have the sprinkler on, watering the lawn (including the bermuda grass I wish would die) and guess that is what I'll do today...water the lawn on all 4 sides of the house, and also run the soaker hoses that are set up around the house's foundation. Our next-door neighbor's house in Fort Worth suffered from severe damage when her soil cracked badly when she was in a rehab center undergoing rehabilitation after her stroke, and we learned a lesson from that. She had to have extensive foundation work with new concrete piers poured, etc., had to have her wood floor lifted, repaired and nailed back down (her hot water heater pipe busted when the house shifted and tons of hot water poured onto her hardwood floors, warping them), had to have cracks in the walls fixed and everything repainted, etc. We figured that whatever money we spend to keep our clay soil from shifting too much around the house is worth it to avoid having that sort of thing happen to us. A couple of things were happening in the garden yesterday. Let's see if I can remember them. The white cosmos that I planted when I took out tomato plants started blooming for the first time yesterday. The pink, rose and mauve cosmos had begun blooming a couple of weeks ago. The garden is chock full of frogs. I've been leaving the northern edge, where I once had tomato plants and now have zinnias, unweeded for them so they can hide more from the snakes that inevitably show up to feed on them. Hummingbirds are simply everywhere. When our hummingbird population suddenly spikes like this, I'm never sure if it is occurring because the babies all have left the nests, or if hummingbirds from further north already are migrating, or if we are just seeing so many because all our trumpet creeper vines are blooming---we have them in at least six different places and they are hummingbird magnets. We always see a huge spike in hummingbird visitors in late July and early August, so what we are seeing is typical. Unfortunately, the purple martins apparently are gone. That, too, is typical, as they first desert the Martin houses in early July when the heat cranks up, but remain around at least a couple of weeks, living in the trees, and we'll still hear them and see them until....suddenly, we don't. Well, we haven't seen or heard them since last weekend, so I think they've gone south. They must leave so early for a good reason. There's still tons and tons of assassin bugs in the garden, and I'm seeing fewer and fewer pests each day. It is good to watch the system work. One thing that has been driving me nuts is the oleander aphids on the yellow butterfly weeds in the perennial border. No matter how often I hose them off the plants with a sharp stream of water, they're back the next day. At first the ladybugs came after them, but then the ladybugs disappeared so apparently the flavor of the oleander aphids (remember, they are eating milkweeds, so they would taste bad) doesn't really appeal to them. So, I did some research. I wanted to avoid using a chemical pesticide. So, technically, I did. Honestly, though, I did use a chemical, just not a garden chemical---Windex. After reading that Chip Taylor had experimented with using it to kill oleander aphids and it didn't harm his milkweed and his caterpillars (you don't spray the Windex if any caterpillars are on the plants, obviously) that fed on those plants later on seemed fine.....well, I thought, why not give it a try. I just sprayed the Windex directly on the oleander aphids, soaking them well, around 8 p.m. one evening. Then I watched the plant for damage for a couple of days. There was no sign at all of any damage to the plant, but the next morning after I sprayed, all those orange oleander aphids were black and dead. I suspect that a person could mix a little ammonia (or, perhaps, rubbing alcohol) with water in a bottle and get the same results, and I might try that if more oleander aphids show up. After hosing them off the plants daily for weeks, I was tired of dealing with them. That is my garden experiment for the summer and I'm happy it worked. I honestly thought that in this heat, the Windex might damage the plants, but if it had, I just would have pruned away the damaged parts. I didn't even hose off the plants....I wanted those dead aphid bodies lying there on the plants as a warning to any other oleander aphids. I also saw and cut in half another milkweed bug, and killed all its babies too. The only other pests doing visible damage in the garden are grasshoppers (tons of them, unfortunately), spider mites (typical) and stink bugs, so it isn't the worst pest year ever. Oh, there still might be a few unwanted army worms and similar caterpillars around, but the wasps are carrying them away, which I enjoy seeing. Have a good day everyone. Dawn