Finding Cause of Camellia Browning Can Aid Prevention
QUESTION: I have white, pink and red camellias in the garden. The red lasts longest, turning brown only at the end, but the white, a beautiful flower, turns brown almost as soon as it opens. Is there any way of preventing this?
--P.B., Pacific Palisades
ANSWER: Variable weather causes most browning, though some varieties are more susceptible than others. Tom Nuccio of Nuccio’s Nurseries in Altadena, longtime camellia specialists, says that some whites, especially “Conrad Hilton,” have a tendency to turn brown. “Silver Waves” is one large white with wavy petals that does well near the coast and doesn’t brown; “Purity” is another, older, variety to try.
Browning could also be petal blight, brought on by rainy weather. “Mushroom weather” brings up small, cup-shaped mushrooms that shoot spores up onto the flowers. Infected flowers not only brown but become mushy. When the weather dries out a little, the blight usually doesn’t appear on subsequent flowers. In other words, the disease spreads from mushroom to flower only when it’s releasing spores, usually following rainy periods.
The mushrooms grow on fallen, blighted flowers from the previous year, and the only control is to rake them up each year and send them to the dump. Nuccio also thinks it helps to spread a fresh, inch-thick mulch around the plants (but not directly at the base). Use wood chips, shredded bark or some other organic mulch. However, the spores can drift in from someone else’s camellias, so even this isn’t foolproof. The smaller-flowered sasanqua camellias, incidentally, don’t get camellia petal blight.
Dropping of Palm-Tree Fruits Hard to Prevent
Q: Our palm trees drop their tiny black fruit in such numbers that daily sweeping of a long stairway is necessary. Is there a product to inhibit flowering and fruiting, such as exists for olive trees?
--H.F., Los Angeles
A: Not really. Even the product made to prevent olives can damage the olive trees and may cause their eventual decline, according to arborists I talked to, and none of the growth regulators are registered for use on palms. You might try simply cutting off the bloom spikes as soon as they poke out, with a pole-mounted pruning saw.
‘False Garlic’ Can Be Rooted Out of Yard
Q: My yard is becoming overrun with a bulb plant that my neighbor has identified as “wild onion” (her yard is filled with them too). What can I do to rid our garden of these plants?
--M.S., South Pasadena
A: The onion relative you describe has already overrun Bermuda and has become naturalized in parts of the Southeast, threatening to do the same here. It is called “false garlic,” or Nothoscordum inodorum, because the gray-green leaves look like a garlic’s or onion’s but have no scent. Herbicides simply roll of the foliage like water off a duck’s back so it must be carefully dug up by hand. Carefully, because the main bulb is covered with tiny baby bulbs and these easily break off. Any left behind will quickly become a new plant. The little cluster of white flowers also set seed, which readily sprouts.
I finally got it out of my garden by digging each of the bulbs and sending them to the dump, along with some of the soil around the bulbs so I wouldn’t leave any of the babies behind. For the next couple of years I was very vigilant, digging out any overlooked or baby bulbs and watching for the tiny seedlings, which begin as two thread-thin grayish leaves. It takes time and a lot of digging, but false garlic can be vanquished.
How to Discourage Cats’ Marking of Territory
Q: I have a problem with neighborhood cats. They stop by my garden to urinate in some of my favorite places. Last fall, I tried spreading around an expensive powder that was not effective for more than a few days, if at all. What can I do to keep those cats out of my garden?
B.C., Los Angeles
A: If the cats are spraying onto the foliage, which is what it sounds like, they are males marking their territory and are tough to deter. We have one neighborhood rogue who regularly hits a clivia near the back door, and you’re right, it is a disagreeable odor. You can try spraying the foliage with one tablespoon of Tabasco sauce mixed into a quart spray bottle filled with water, or dust the ground with cayenne pepper. These peppery products deter all sorts of pests but each time you water, you’ll have to reapply. I know one gardener who is battling deer with 15-pound commercial tins of cayenne pepper.
Better for the whole neighborhood: See if the cats’ owner will get them fixed, which usually, but not always, stops this behavior. If the cats are digging in your beds, a thick, coarse organic mulch (such as shredded tree trimmings) will help deter them, or loosely cover bare soil with black nylon bird netting.
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