My garden is an overgrown, disease-ridden mess!

I am looking forward to next week when this spell of gloomy, rainy weather should be over and I can finally get some control over my garden.

Thanks to the rain, weeds have reached gigantic proportions and the garden thugs—wisteria, bittersweet, and wild multiflora rose--are strangling my shrubs. I can take care of these problems when I can get out there and do some major cutting back.

However, I am at loss as to how to control the pachysandra mosaic virus. I went to Primex Garden Center and was advised to cut it back and, as pachysandra needs acid soil, to fertilize with hollytone.

The situatin just got worse. I went back to Primex and someone said that I needed a stronger acidifier than hollytone and recommended a bag of soil acidifier—-mainly sulfur. So far not much has changed. I continue cutting back, focusing on the most diseased plants.

There is some good news. It’s been a great year for tree peonies:


Each year there are always some plants which perform far better than expectations and those like my crabapple trees which for some unknown reason decide not to bloom. Gardening is full of surprises!