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Plants

In This Case, the Grass Is Greener on the Other Side of the Country

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TIMES GARDEN EDITOR

Question: Have you heard of Amazoy Lawns by Zoysia Farm Nurseries? It claims to stay green year round and need very little watering and mowing. Is this too good to be true?

--V.R.D., Los Angeles

Answer: Stay away from those eastern zoysia creeping grasses, touted in full-page magazine ads. They’re advertised like the overly tart but nearly tasteless “tree tomatoes.” Tree tomatoes are actually tamarillos (Cyphomandra betacea), and you can grow them easily from seed, but they barely taste like tomatoes and cannot be used in the same way.

Similarly, zoysia varieties from the East Coast are not going to live up to advertised expectations and will do poorly in California. No matter what the ads call them, they are actually ‘Meyer’ varieties of zoysia and in California they have a long dormant period; they are completely brown for several months. They are also very slow to knit together into a lawn.

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Even those zoysia that do well in Southern California have these drawbacks to a lesser degree. If you want a zoysia lawn, look for sod of one named ‘El Toro,’ developed by the University of California. It is faster to fill in, has better texture and color and a much shorter dormant period. Along the coast it may not go dormant.

‘El Toro’ has been recommended as a good lawn for dogs to play on, if it is overseeded with tall fescue grass to add some color in winter. But Bermuda grass is also a good choice, especially a hybrid like ‘Tifgreen.’

Korean grass is another good zoysia for California, but it’s meant to be used as a ground cover, not walked on.

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Q: Last year I planted a passion flower vine. At the end of summer I had caterpillars stripping the vine of all foliage so I sprayed with BT [the bio-control Bacillus thuringiensis]. I then realized the caterpillars were the larva of a beautiful butterfly. If I allow the caterpillars to munch on my vine, will that kill it or will it regrow?

--L.P., Westchester

A: That beautiful butterfly is a Gulf Fritillary, easily identified by the metallic markings under the wings. It is not a native butterfly but is from Latin America, though it has been here a long time. It feeds exclusively on passion vines, apparently only on the kind with soft, five-lobed leaves (Passiflora caerulea), not on the thicker, three-lobed garden hybrids.

The caterpillars can pretty much defoliate a passion vine but I have never seen them kill one. The vines always rebound and usually grow faster than the caterpillars eat them, though just barely. The butterflies will not wander far from the vine so it is well worth growing just to keep them in the garden. I used to grow one in the side yard where its skeletonized remains were out of sight. I even got edible fruit off the poor thing.

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Although BT is one of the safest controls around, it still must be used thoughtfully because it kills good caterpillars as thoroughly as bad ones. It will kill the caterpillars of the handsome black and yellow Morning Cloak or the Anise Swallowtail just as easily as the dreaded tomato hornworm or the caterpillars of the Cabbage Butterfly that is such a pest on cole or vegetable crops. That’s why it’s important to spray only the plant under attack and to spray only when there is no breeze to blow the spray onto unintended targets.

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Q: I have a plum tree that my fiance loves but I hate. It sends up many, many suckers [from the roots] into the rose gardens that I have naively planted on either side of the plum tree. I cut them off and a hundred more appear. What can I do to get rid of suckers and prevent them from reappearing?

--K.W., Winnetka

A: You can try spraying the new growth when it is still less than 10 inches tall with Sucker Stopper RTU, made by Monterey Lawn and Garden Products (https://www.montereylawngarden.com). In your letter you mentioned that you tried pulling the suckers off and couldn’t, but yanking and ripping off suckers is less likely to promote new suckering than cutting.

You also mentioned the possibility of spraying them with the herbicide Roundup, but this is a systemic product that travels inside plant tissue. So it would work its way back into the tree and do widespread damage, disfiguring the tree at the very least.

Roundup should never be used around roses anyway since the spray will drift onto them and cause strange, curled and deformed growth. It is not a good general purpose herbicide and its use should be carefully considered. In my book, it is only useful for killing Bermuda grass lawns so you can plant something else instead, like a nectar garden for those butterflies mentioned earlier.

Questions should be sent to “Garden Q&A;” in care of Southern California Living, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or e-mail robert.smaus@latimes.com. Please include your address and telephone number. Questions cannot be answered individually.

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