I've got 4 Penstemon 'Mystica' but the bed where they were planted last year gets increasingly less sunlight as trees around edge of property grow taller. I planted them in mounds for better drainage as suggested somewhere online. Hard to water mounds and roots became exposed so I added soil around plant mounds. There are 2 problems I'm having with them. First, the stems came up all twisted and snap off very easily when I try to straighten and corral them from flopping all over. Lack of enough sunlight? They get about 4 hours total sunlight a day before sun goes over back of house. Second, the leaves are all curled. There isn't any pest causing the curling and there's nothing sticky on them as residue from any pest. Why the leaf curling? Not enough water? Also, lack of enough sunlight? I have 2 'Husker's Red' up by the mail box and they stand erect with good leaf condition. They get about 5 hours sun in morning and 2 hours late afternoon. I'd sure appreciate any educated guesses you could give me. I'm guessing I have to move them to a place where they can get more sunlight but I have no idea where I'll put them given their larger size. Next year I'm going to leave the seedheads on...the stems look silly just standing there with flat heads of horizontal leaves...LOL. I'm obsessive about deadheading because I got the idea somewhere that a plant uses energy to produce seed instead of putting it toward needed root growth. Thanks. :)

The following was stated: "Maybe HK could report back on the results of his experiments too." H.Kuska comment. I grew about 1000 roses in a no spray garden (I say grew because I am now in advanced retirement, age 78). I mainly reported on my experience with hydrogen peroxide in the Rose Hybridizers web page. A search of that site gives 126 hits with the search term "hydrogen peroxide". I used to have a web page of my own with considerable rose information, but the company (Road Runner) discontinued providing web pages. --------------------------------------------------------------------- An attempt to utilize either aspirin or hydrogen peroxide to trigger the immune response comes under the topic of Integrated Pest Management . http://www.rose.org/rose-care-articles/integrated-pest-management-what-is-it/ " IPM works in a progressive manner. You start with the least harmful methods of control for man, animals, and the environment collectively. The use of natural controls is the first item on the list. If they fail, then you progress to controls with the least harm to man, then to the least known to harm to animals and beneficial insects, and finally the environment. Also in this process is consideration of cost effectiveness for short and long term controls. No need for an expensive, labor intensive program to remove a small percent of the population." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- A normal Google search with the keywords "integrated pest management" and "salicylic acid" gives the hits (about 16,500, they only list 291) listed at the link below: https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&authuser=0&gws_rd=ssl#newwindow=1&hl=en&authuser=0&q=%22Integrated+Pest+Management%22+%22salicylic+acid%22+ If you add the keyword "roses" to the above Google search, you get about 147,000 hits (they only list 228). (I do not understand how adding an additional keyword can result in more hits unless they include hits where 2 of the 3 search terms were found.) Similar searches with the keyword "salicylic acid replaced with "hydrogen peroxide" gave 52,100 and 440,000 hits respectively. If one includes both, one gets 10,700 and 17,600 hits respectively.

It is a nice list, but I have companion planted forever and want to stress that it is far from a proven science. In fact, in multiple university studies, the companion planting claims do not hold up in controlled studies done to study their efficacy. I am at the point that I ignore all those comments about "improves growth or flavor" and I ignore 98% of the comments about any type of plant repelling specific pests. Very few of those supposed benefits have been observed in my garden, and I've been companion planting in this location ever since we moved here in 1999. The reason to companion plant is to attract beneficial insects, and that's why I do it. Here's one example from what I've learned over the years: I can surround my cabbage beds, for example, with a solid border of all the companion plants said to repel cabbage worms, and my cabbage plants (and all other brassicas susceptible to the same pests) will be totally devoured by cabbage worms anyway. Often, those cabbage worms are sitting so close to the plants that supposedly repel them that they can use the companion plants to travel from one cabbage plant to another. So, take those sorts of recommendations with a grain of salt and just save yourself the hassle by growing your brassicas underneath row covers or insect netting placed over low tunnel hoops. It is the single most effective thing I've done in my garden in terms of deterring all types of brassica type caterpillar pests from devouring brassica plants. It is a gazillion times easier and more efficient/productive that devoting garden space to companion plants that don't repel the pests anyway, and it is preferable to using Bt 'kurstaki' in the garden, since the Bt can harm desirable butterflies. In the back garden I felt like I had some success with common wormwood repelling some but not all caterpillars from brassicas, but common wormwood is a garden thug that gets huge and reseeds readily. Fortunately for me, I believe the flooding of 2015 killed all my wormwood. I don't intend to replant it, and live in fear of it spontaneously making a comeback from self-sown seed and taking over the whole back garden again. There are some things that do seem to work. For example, growing horseradish (preferably in pots since it is invasive) does seem to help (though not 100%) keep Colorado Potato Bugs off your potato plants. But, guess what? If the CPBs show up and are repelled from the potato plants by nearby horseradish, guess where the CPBS will go? Straight to the tomato plants. So, remember you also can see some unintended consequences. I find hand-picking and drowning the CPBs as soon as they show up to be the best way to manage them. It is important to find them the first day they show up, before they can breed and lay eggs. Growing basil with tomatoes seems to help repel hornworms, but you'll see an occasional hornworm on a plant anyway. I feel like four o'clocks planted as a heavy border along two sides of the garden also repel hornworms. Otherwise, there's no real explanation for how I can grow hundreds of tomato plants each year and almost never see more than 1 to 6 hornworms the entire growing season. The area where companion plants shine is in the way they attract beneficial insects, which serve multiple purposes in your garden. This is how I use companion plants nowadays, after determining that their other reported benefits are hard to see, hard to prove and harder and harder to believe. For attracting beneficials, you need a wide range of companion plants, and the most important is to have something that is green and, hopefully, in bloom virtually year-round. Diversity is important so instead of growing tons and tons of each companion plant, I grow a few of many, many different plants. The most useful plants for attracting a wide range of beneficials are those that have small flowers or large flowerheads composed of many small flowers (like yarrow, tansy, sweet alyssum, etc.) and daisy type flowers. I feel like the flowers/herbs that attract the most beneficial insects to our garden are these: sweet alyssum, dill, fennel, yarrow, statice, purple poppy mallow, petunias (especially Laura Bush petunias with their heat tolrance), feverfew, nicotiana, small flowered marigolds like lemon gem, tangerine gem, and red gem, cilantro/coriander (you have to leave it and let it bloom in order to attract the beneficials so you don't harvest this cilantro as cilantro but you can harvest the seeds for coriander), parsley, tansy, silver tansy, comfrey, zinnias, cosmos, buckwheat, spike speedwell, nasturtiums, and moss rose. Many other herbs will attract beneficial insects once they flower, and this includes catnip, catmint, lemon balm, sage, basil, mints (in pots only as they are incredibly invasive), borage, and wormwood. The beneficial insects that I most want to attract to my garden, in addition to bees of all kinds, are green lacewings, brown lacewings, hover flies, lady bugs, minute pirate bugs, big-eyed bugs, and all the little parasitic wasps like brachonid wasps, ichneumoid waspas, and trichogrammas wasps. The plants I listed above do attract them and I think the beneficial wasps, in specific, are why I don't have a lot of caterpillars anyway, notwithstanding the annual onslaught of cabbage worms. I believe the beneficial wasps eventually, in due time, would control the cabbage worms, but before that could happen, you'd have holey plants, so I just exclude them from the plants in the first place. You don't have to run out and buy tons of packets of flower and herb seeds. Many seed companies sell pollinator blends and good bug blends that attract bees and other pollinators as well as the beneficial insects I listed above. You can buy as little as one seed packet of pollinator or good bug attracting plants, or you can buy the mixes by the quarter pound or pound. I have used seed mixes like these from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, Wildseed Farms and Botanical Interests, among others. Because many of the plants that attract pollinators are large, getting quite tall and spreading out wide, the easiest way to grow them is as border plants along the edges of your garden. You can choose smaller, more compact companion plants to grow in the same beds as your garden plants, but understand that even these can take up a lot of space if you aren't careful. It is hard enough to squeeze them into a large garden, and considerably harder to find space for them in small gardens. A lot of the herbs and flowers I grow to attract beneficials are grown as shorter border plants along the edges of raised beds or, if they are too tall to be true edging plants, I grow them at the ends of each raised bed, but not in the middles of the bed where the actual crop plants are growing. If you've ever seen a borage plant growing and spreading massively to try to outgrow the tomato plants beside it, you'll understand where I'm coming from. Of course, almost all my companion plants reseed readily, popping up anywhere and everywhere. I try to let them stay where they sprouted when I can, but if they start to outgrow the vegetable plants they're sitting next to, I either prune them back really hard or yank them out. I also grow tons of wildflowers outside the garden fence on all sides of the garden because they also attract beneficials. The area where most people fall short when planting to attract beneficials is that they fail to plan for the cool season. I have lady bugs, bees and other beneficial insects out even in January, frantically searching for food, so I do the best I can to provide for them. I always leave henbit wherever it pops up and let it bloom because so many beneficials depend on it in the cool-season. I have sweet alyssum and chamomile in bloom by February of most years and they attract many beneficials. I often have dianthus and violas blooming in February or early March. For early beneficials, you need extra-early plants to attract them and also to feed them. I never, ever, ever under any condition would consider ground ivy/Creeping Charlie to be a companion plant. It is a rampant, highly-invasive thug and I don't tolerate it anywhere. If you let it take hold and get established, you'll have it forever and it will be on a constant mission to take over every square inch of planting space, and it isn't just happy to occupy the garden. It will fight to stay in the lawn and in flower beds. Right now, if you walk out into my frozen garden, you'll still find green catnip plants (regrown since we dropped down to 4 degrees a few weeks ago), tansy and dianthus. You'll also find beneficial insects on them on all but the coldest days. You may not see the beneficial insects early in the morning on cold days, but you'll see them out by mid-day. When planting both cosmos and zinnias to attract beneficial insects, search out old-fashioned varieties that haven't had their nectar/pollen tampered with by modern plant breeders. Also, plant the shorter varieties that stay more compact and are easier to manage or you'll end up with huge cosmos and zinnia plants (easily attaining 4-5' in height) shading out surrounding plants. Same thing with nasturtiums. Grow only the short, busy ones, not the vining ones. While some of the more modern zinnias have tolerance of/resistance to powdery mildew bred into them and they look nice, they don't attract and keep beneficials like the old OP varieties do. I love companion planting and mixing in herbs and flowers with fruits and veggies all over the garden, but you have to manage the way you use companion plants or you'll find too much of your resources (soil, water, even light) going to them and not enough going to the edible plants you're growing. There are a few plants that make great trap plants, attracting pests to them. The way to use them is to grow them outside the garden itself in order to lure those pests away from the garden. Sunflowers are my favorite for this purpose. If you plant sunflowers outside the garden, maybe 10' from the garden, they'll attract stink bugs to them. Then, you can use the method of your choice to kill the stink bugs. Anything I can do to attract stinkbugs away from the garden in summer is worth doing. They are a horrible pest that feed on the fruits of most summer crops. The grain type amaranths are useful in this way to as they can lure some pests away from your garden.

Good to see you back, Campanula. Your garden sounds like Piacenza this time of year: ratty, dry, mildewed, overgrown. Somehow it turns back into a marvel every spring. Like everybody else, it seems, I'm behind in my gardening. Last December's ice storm in particular has cost a lot of maintenance hours, and is still operating. The storm smashed all the black locusts, which took days to cut up and distribute, and now the damaged trees are suckering with determination, clearing them making another chore. 2017 was also our great Drought Year, running from fall 2016 to fall 2017. The good news there is that established plants suffered very little, taking month after month of litte to no water in their stride. We were about at the epicenter of the drought, so it was a good test situation. Deer, fairly recent arrivals, are horrible here, too: we have to protect trees, shrubs, and roses if we don't want them to be eaten or smashed. We apparently have a wolf population developing, too, and even my conservative dairy farmer neighbor suggested that perhaps wolves aren't such a bad thing for keeping the wild boars and deer under control. I want lynxes to make their way into our area: they're supposed to be major deer predators. Since we came here we've seen the wolves and the roe deer come: why not lynxes, too? I went back and re-read your original post: you planted R. helenae and 'Darlow's Enigma' in an allotment? Oh, my. Well, if you want more huge ramblers for your woods, let me recommend 'Treasure Trove', R. longicuspis, 'Brenda Colvin', and all the Ayrshires, which seem to be badly confused in commerce but are all good. I get the health and energy problems, and hope you see both restored soon. DH had a quadruple bypass and two further surgeries last year but has regained much of his previous bounce, so it can be done. I'm creaky, too, but at the moment feel okay. I'm waiting for temperatures to drop after having spent most of the last ten days flat on my back under the fan. The change may be happening as I write: it's cloudy and cooler this morning, encouraging me to think of getting out and attacking the chore of training R. longicuspis into her flowering ash, and continuing cutting back an overgrown locust and 'Treasure Trove' growing in it. Maybe, as long as I have the ladder out, I'll shear the tops of the yew hedge. The shade garden didn't even look like a garden anymore after a month or two of neglect, but DH and I have been wrestling it back into its form. I'm hopeful that the huge amount of organic matter resulting from the ice storm will make its effects felt in the coming years as it decomposes. Good luck!