Numbing Nutsedge Nightmare

Sometimes, a little gardening knowledge is a burden too difficult for the gardener's soul to bear.  We see things that others don't, the subtle hues that don't belong, the texture that doesn't blend, and it tears at us, ripping away the mantle of civil society and bearing the dark soil within.  We try to seek justice, try to shift the weight of wisdom off our shoulders, but find no relief.  Such it was with ProfessorRoush this past week.

Every day, as I come to work, I pass the simple bed pictured above along the sidewalk, a few short yards to the left of the entrance.  On May 30th, I noted with some amusement the overgrowth of yellow nutsedge in the bed (circled in red) among the struggling daylilies (circled in blue), and brought it to the attention of the individuals who oversee the care of the bed, passing along both my identification, my recommendations for a nutsedge-specific herbicide, and my general angst at discovering this unholy mess outside my workplace.

 Today, I noticed that the bed had been sprayed (see the photo directly below) and that all the plants were dying, nutsedge and innocent daylily alike.  Obviously this area was sprayed with glyphosate or some other non-selective herbicide.  While my call to arms had been heeded, my renowned advice had not.

While cogitating this distressing development, reeling and staggering from the renewed load placed upon my shoulders, I meandered to the beds on the right side of the entrance, and realized to my horror that these beds were no better, in fact far worse, than the original abomination was.  Preserving them for prosperity, I present them here for you to ponder:

Bed portion 1; Containing a world-beating crop of yellow nutsedge (circled in red in the foreground), with some barely surviving ornamental grass in the back (circled in blue).  I think this grass was originally Panicum 'Cheyenne Sky' or something similar.












Bed portion 2: A really not-delightful mix of more original ornamental grass (blue circles), crowded into the margin by what I think is a wild tri-lobed sumac (orange circle), and more yellow nutsedge (red circles).







Bed portion 3:  A miserable grouping of ornamental grass (blue circles), common dayflower (yellow circles) and yellow nutsedge (red circle).  The common dayflower, as you know from my previous rants thereof, is a virtually indestructible weed in this region.






I shall suffer on here, sickened by the senselessness of the slaughter I've seen, but not in silence, nay, I have again unleashed the furies of  unsolicited advice on the herbicidal unwashed.  Unrequited, I may soon have to resort to guerrilla gardening in the shadows of night, spray bottle and trowel in hand, a furtive figure following a path to futile madness.   

Purple Wow Factor

'Orpheline de Julliet'

I think this blog is far past due for a rose update, don't you agree?  Old Garden Roses are nearly always beautiful and generally healthy little floral critters, but even these time-selected varieties seldom bring me to my knees with awe.  This particular new rose in my garden, however, 'Orpheline de Julliet’, is certainly making me sway on my feet if only just a little.

I planted 'Orpheline de Julliet' in 2017, a small band without much substance at the time, but a lot of promise.  She survived the drought of last year, growing a little but not spectacularly.  This year she has grown to approximately 2 feet tall and wide, and is finally giving me a show that I hope will only grow over the years as she reaches her advertised mature height of 6 feet tall.

'Orpheline de Julliet', whom I'll nickname "Orphie" here, is a Gallica rose of unknown heritage.  Some sources trace her to William Paul's The Rose Garden published in 1848, while others claim she was listed in Vibert's catalog in 1836 and give her a pre-1836 birthdate.  According to Brent Dickinson, the name translates to "July (female) Orphan," so named because she often blooms later than most once-blooming roses, an orphan at the end of the rose season.  Here, in Kansas, I wouldn't call her particularly late, as she is blooming along with 'Madame Hardy' and right at the tail of the main rose bloom in my garden.  Officially, helpmefindrose.com lists her as "crimson and red", with a strong fragrance, full quartered bloom form, once-blooming, and with a Zone 4 cold tolerance.

'Tuscany Superb'

The lure of Orphie, however, is in those deep crimson blooms.  I've seldom seen a rose with such deep color, similar to 'Tuscany Superb' but with more full flowers and even deeper tones.  My 'Tuscany Superb', seen at right, struggles in the garden, while Orphie is drawing my attention right from the starting gate and is much healthier and more robust. Set off against a light green matte foliage, the blooms fairly pop from the bush across the garden, don't they?  Yes, 'Orpheline de Julliet' will be a keeper in my garden, with proven survival power and the ability to make Mrs. ProfessorRoush gasp as she comes round to her corner.

Old Friends and New

'Topaz Jewel', risen from the muck

While ProfessorRoush's exterior surfaces are a bit "dampened" by all the rain we've been getting, he was still overjoyed today to see the little bit of "sunshine" to the right, re-entering his garden on a cloudy day after so many years of absence.  This is 'Topaz Jewel', planted in 2009, a nice rose in a lousy spot. Blasted by winter, forage for Japanese beetles, she has survived all that and risen again.  She has not bloomed in my garden for the past two years, and in 2017, in fact, I wrote her off as extinct when I found nothing but a dry corpse of stems in her stead.  Then, last year, among the weeds and the Rosa Mundi that I let spread a little too much in this area during my drought-garden ennui, there was some rose foliage here that looked slightly different than R. mundi, a little lighter green, and a little rougher leaf texture.  This spring there was a start of a stronger growth, now more visibly rugose, and I've been holding my breath for months as this bud grew and grew and matured during the rain until two days ago, the sepals began to spread and showed this brilliant yellow hue, confirming that 'Topaz Jewel' had survived against all odds.  In the midst of all the death from Rose Rosette Disease in my garden, one small bit of rugosa resistance is all I really need to lift me as high as the storm clouds around central Kansas.

In fact, my entire rose garden area is a swamp, a clay-based water basin of pure ooze.  It is placed on a slight slope behind the house, but still, this morning, after an inch of rain Saturday and another 3/4's inch last night, you can see the water standing next to this bed right in front of 'Topaz Jewel' in the photo to the left.  I planted a couple of new roses yesterday in a bed near here, slipping and sliding them into their designated spots, and found that if you dig a hole 6 inches deep anywhere in these garden beds, it will fill instantly with water.  I will probably have nightmares tonight of all the rose roots screaming for oxygen in the yard while I helplessly listen to the storms forecast to visit once again.  'Topaz Jewel' and her immediate neighbors are at least in a raised berm, probably their only salvation at present.


New roses are beginning to bloom this year, however, to fill in the gaps from RRD and to keep my hopes "afloat."  The striped rose pictured at the right, in keeping with my switch to RRD-resistant Hybrid Rugosas and Old Garden Roses, was planted just last year, and today was the first bloom in my garden of Mr. 'Georges Vibert'.  Mr. Vibert, or Georges as I will affectionately call him, is an 1853 Gallica bred by M. Robert of France.  You all know my weakness for striped roses, and this one seemed like an obvious choice to fill in a gap in both my garden beds and in my soul.  I'm hopeful for Georges continued health and vitality in my garden, especially since helpmefind/roses states that the Montreal Botanical Garden rated it as one of it's most disease resistant roses in 1998.

I should finish by apologizing for being unable to resist the water-referencing puns I've "sprinkled" through this entry.  Puns, though painful to the reader, are often, in my opinion, just one manifestation of a tormented writing soul, or, more specifically in my case, one "drowning" in an unusually wet season.

What the Bleep is This?

So, God, I guess you decided that sending me Rose Rosette Disease and wiping out all my modern roses wasn't enough of a trial for me, huh?  A devastating hail wasn't enough?  You didn't remember that your previous gift of Japanese Beetles was surely enough of a plague to throw at me?  You had to find some new pestilence to give me a new challenge?

I was peacefully inspecting the roses on Friday night during a break in the continual storms of the past week, when the skeletonized leaves of the photo above caught my eye.  Gads, I thought, what is this?  Luckily for me, I've been around the rose block, so to speak, and knew immediately what I was looking at; Endelomyia aethiops, better known as the Roseslug.  Or, in it's adult form, a sawfly.   And, as I looked closer, these were on almost every non-Hybrid Rugosa rose in my garden; in other words, on almost all the old garden roses and other hybrids that survived my RRD epidemic.  I've seen them before at the K-State Gardens and in other rose gardens, but rarely in mine and never on some many roses at once.

Of course, I'm not an expert at insect larvae identification, and it could be that these are Allantus cinctus, the Curled Rose Sawfly, or perhaps Cladius difformis, the Bristly Rose Slug.  Still, "my" larvae do not have bristles, nor do they curl up when disturbed, so I'm going to maintain these are Endelomyia aethiops.  Even though I don't really care about the actual identification other than the scientific curiosity of the thing.  I simply want them dead.  I want all of them dead.

Internet sources suggested they can be controlled by handpicking.  Sure, you bet, I'm going to handpick these off of all the dozens of roses out there in the garden. Not!  I also read that they can be removed by spraying with water since they can't climb back onto the plant after they have been dislodged.  And yes, insecticidal soap and horticultural oils are also effective treatments.

Geminy, what a bunch of W.E.E. wimps these internet insect gurus are!  I don't want to just inconvenience these slugs, I want to nuke them off the planet!  I agree with the suggestion of Sigourney Weaver's character (Lt. Ripley) in Aliens; another story about a rapidly breeding destructive set of insects.  "Nuke them from orbit," Ripley said, "it's the only way to be sure."  So I went for the big guns.   Because some of these roses also had a little early blackspot after all the rain, I dusted off my trusty bottle of Ortho 3-in-1 insecticide-fungicide-miticide and went nuclear on these helpless larvae.  You can see the dampness of the spray on the leaves of the second photo.

  

I won't try to defend my actions, except to firmly avow that I carefully followed the label directions. On the contrary, I admit that I enjoyed every second of this momentary lapse from my best attempts to garden organically.  Heck, what good is science anyway, if we can't use it?