There are several kinds of pond liners available in pond stores.

The first is EPDM rubber – and this is extremely durable, resists punctures and quite flexible. It is normally sold in 40 or 45 mil thickness. If you intend to put a rock bottom on top of your liner, this is the liner for you as it is very flexible and will give and take with freezing. The puncture resistance and flexibility ensure a long life and consistent performance. Usually guaranteed for over 20 years.

Polyethylene is the cheapest liner you can buy. But with this lowered cost comes a lowered lifespan. If exposed to sunlight – this material may only last one season. It is not puncture resistant and it is quite stiff. The only serious use of this material is if you have a very large pond with a sandy bottom and can bury the edges so the sunlight can’t get to it. But if you think you want to build a backyard pond cheaply, using this is truly false economy.

Polypropylene is another choice and it comes in the same thickness as EPDM and is equally puncture resistant. The problem comes in the flexibility (about the same as polyethylene which is to say terrible) and this makes it difficult to go around corners. But it is the strongest of the liners.

Old swimming pool liners make terrible liners as they tend to degrade quickly in the sunlight and are quite stiff.

And what about cheaper materials such as that for roofing. The difference between fish-safe and other material is that the fish safe liners are made with a consistent formula. Other non-fish materials might be OK in this batch but if compound A becomes cheaper next week, it will replace the more expensive compound B. The difficulty is that it doesn’t matter for roofing that compound A kills off fish while compound B does not. In fish-safe liners, all material used is consistently fish-safe. But it is possible to obtain a real deal on roof liner material sometimes – just be aware that it may or may not be fish safe.

Doug Green, an award winning garden writer with 7 books published answers gardening questions in his free newsletter at http://www.water-gardens-information.com.

Most Japanese Maple seeds ripen in the fall. Watch the tree and wait for the seeds to turn brown. The seeds are ready to be harvested when they are brown and can be easily removed from the tree.

The seeds are attached to a wing, it’s best to break the wing off before storing or planting the seeds. Japanese Maple seeds have a very hard outer coating as do many ornamental plants. Under natural conditions the seeds would have to be on the ground for almost two years before they would germinate. All that happens the first winter is the moisture softens the hard outer shell, and the second winter germination is beginning to take place.

In order for all of this to happen in the proper sequence so the seedlings actually sprout at a time of the year when freezing temperatures or hot summer sun doesn’t kill them, takes a tremendous amount of luck.

You can improve the odds by controlling some of these conditions, and shorten the cycle. Once you have picked the seeds and removed the wing just place them in a paper bag and store them in a cool dry place until you are ready for them. You don’t want to plant your seeds out in the spring until the danger of frost has past. Here in the north May 15th is a safe bet.

If May 15th is your target date you should count backwards on the calendar 100 days. That will take you to about February 5th if my math is correct. On or about the 100th day prior to your target planting date, take the seeds and place them in a Styrofoam cup or other container that will withstand some hot water. Draw warm to hot water from your kitchen faucet and pour it over the seeds. Most of the seeds will float, just leave them in the water overnight as the water cools down. 24 hours later most of the seeds will have settled to the bottom of the cup.

Drain off the water. Place the seeds in a plastic bag with a mixture of sand and peat or other suitable growing mix. Even light potting soil will work. The peat or soil should be moist, but not soaking wet. Poke some holes in the bag so there is some air circulation, and place the bag in your refrigerator for a period of 100 days.

After 100 days you can plant the seeds outside. If you have timed it correctly, you should be at or close to your target planting date.

To plant the seeds just sow them on top of a bed of well drained topsoil or sterilized potting soil, and cover with approximately 3/8” of soil. Water them thoroughly, but allow the soil to dry out completely before watering thoroughly again. If you water them frequently, not only do you stand a chance of the seeds rotting from being too wet, but you will also keep them cool, which will slow down the germination process.

Once they start to germinate provide about 50% shade to keep the sun from burning them. Snow fence suspended about 30” above the bed will provide about 50% shade. Japanese Maples will tolerate some shade so it isn’t too important to transplant them too quickly. Depending on how close together they are, you might be able to leave them in the same bed for one or two growing seasons. Don’t transplant until they are completely dormant.

You are welcome to use this article on your website or in your newsletter as long as you reprint it as is, including the contact information at the end. Website URLs must be active links. You are welcome to use this article with an affiliate link, http://www.freeplants.com/resellers.htm

Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit his most interesting website, http://www.freeplants.com and sign up for his excellent gardening newsletter. Article provided by http://gardening-articles.com

Adult Japanese beetles are one quarter to one half inch long with copper colored wing covers and a shiny metallic green head. Between the green head and tiny tufts of white hair along their side you’ll recognize them easily as they happily munch on your roses.

While they generally don’t eat dogwood, forsythia, holly, lilac, evergreens and Hosta, they’ll eat darn near everything else. These beetles feed on flowers and fruits making a skeleton of the leaves by eating the green parts and leaving the veins. Adults are most active from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. on warm summer days. These voracious pests prefer plants in direct sun, so shady areas are usually less damaged.

The bacterial spore, sold as ‘Doom’ or ‘Grub Attack’ is generally used to control these pests. Using a hormone lure in your yard simply attracts more beetles to your yard. Put the lure somewhere else a hundred yards away encouraging the beetles to go elsewhere. Unfortunately, reducing the beetles in your yard will not reduce their attacks in succeeding years. These beetles are great fliers and can travel upwards of ten miles from where they hatched.

Handpicking is also effective on your prized plants – drop the beetles into a bucket of soapy water to kill them. There is some data that suggests hand picking is as effective as spraying noxious chemicals and you know you have killed the beetle when it drowns in your soapy bucket. One trick is to hold the bucket of soapy water under the plant and then shake the plant. Beetles will fall off the plant right into the bucket and you’ll get more beetles if you do this in the early morning before they start feeding and flying. Several birds (grackles, cardinals, meadowlarks) feed on the adult beetles so encourage birds in your yard. If you decide to use a lure, place it at least 100 feet away from your garden. Lures attract beetles and if you place one in your garden, you’ll have all the neighbors beetles visiting as well. Find a neighbor who doesn’t garden to host the lures and traps.

Doug Green, an award winning garden author with 7 books published answers gardening questions in his free gardening newsletter at http://www.learn-rose-gardening.com

Every year visitors to our gardens here in Maine bring questions about some problem or other in their gardens. Not surprisingly, many have to do with near-Biblical hoards of Japanese Beetles, and the relationship between burgeoning numbers of these destructive insects and those readily-available pheromone lure beetle traps on merchant’s shelves.

Well, what about Japanese Beetle traps? Do they really work? Or are they — as more and more of us are finally realizing — part of the problem? You may find my response to the following frustrated gardener’s recent emailed plea for help enlightening. . .if not encouraging:

"Help! Japanese Beetles were especially bad this year. We put up three traps and had more beetles than anyone else in our neighborhood! What did we do wrong?"

Some things simply resist explanation, while solutions to other pressing gardening problems are so patently apparent that I’m surprised everyone hasn’t already deduced the answer. To get to the core of the problem, during 2004 we conducted a survey of sorts, asking garden visitors about their experiences and thoughts on the subject.

About half of those queried felt there were increased populations of Japanese Beetles that season; the other half said there seemed to be fewer. Not surprisingly, most of the more beetles half had installed commercial pheromone traps in their gardens or on lawns. Japanese beetles literally flocked around those traps!

If anything can be faulted for increased numbers of these rascals in the garden, it certainly wasn’t the above gardener. If trap manufacturers had bothered to print a simple advisory on the label, more folks would have been in the less-beetles half. Seems to me it wouldn’t have taken rocket science to anticipate the hoards that would be drawn to precisely the wrong spot. . .the banquet table!

You see, beetles are attracted to traps from hundreds of feet away. Putting those traps in the midst of a garden is tantamount to sending out engraved invitations to the salad bar. True, many of them will eventually get caught in the trap but not before they inflict serious damage to nearby expensive or treasured landscape plants. If that’s been your experience, you would be far better off buying traps for your up-wind neighbors to hang in their yards! Next year, if you feel you must purchase traps, locate them upwind and away from your garden (we found that 75′ to 100′ was an optimal distance for our circumstances). Just determine from which direction the prevailing wind comes and locate the trap there. A light breeze will carry the pheromone scent across your yard, beetles will detect the odor and fly out and toward the direction of their demise. Simple. . .cleverly deceptive. . .and notably effective.

Finally a predator! - A Tiny Winged Hope. Imagine, for a moment, that spring is about to burst upon the gardening scene. Adult Japanese Beetles (Popillia japonica) emerge from the ground, take wing, and begin a search for our roses, grapes, hollyhocks, maples, and Virginia creeper vines. . .not to mention mates! Since their introduction from the Orient in about 1916, these wretched little jewel-like insects have been the bane of gardeners and market farmers. The only marginally-effective controls during much of that time were hand-picking, application of BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) to lawns and mowed areas, or the spread of dangerous chemicals.

Now a new "star" has emerged onto the gardening scene: Istocheta aldrichi, a small Tachinid fly whose primary goal in life is to locate small beetles upon which to glue their eggs. It was actually introduced in 1922 specifically to parasitize — and therefore control — other destructive agriculturally-important insects. Their general appearance is much like common houseflies, the difference being that tachinids nearly always remain outdoors and feed chiefly on nectar, honeydew and, occasionally, pollen, deposit only eggs, and have extra bristle-like hairs on their abdomen. Common houseflies, on the other hand, have much shorter abdominal "hairs," seek out malodorous garbage, rotting carrion, smelly outhouses, and leftover food scraps upon which to deposit their live-born larvae ("maggots"). Tachinids have more or less recently developed a taste for Japanese Beetles. Here’s how they get the job done:

*Tachinid flies over-winter as pupae in the long-dead shells of their beetle hosts, then emerge as adult flies during early June in the Northeast.

*Adults feed on the products of flowers (causing no damage in the process), locate a mate, then immediately begin the search for an appropriate host (mostly newly-emerged beetles) upon which to firmly glue from one to three eggs.

*Each female tachinid can deposit about 100 eggs over a fourteen day period. The deposited egg hatches within 24 hours and the resulting tiny larvae quickly burrows into the beetle’s abdominal cavity where it proceeds to consume the insect .

*The now-parasitized beetle almost immediately falls to the ground and buries itself, where it perishes in a few days,

usually without having laid its eggs. Compare that brief unproductive existence to the normal 28- to 40-day destructive lifespan of non-parasitized beetles.

*A few days after the host beetle dies, pupation (the next step in tachinid development) occurs, a stage that generally lasts about 1-1/2 to 2 weeks in ideal environmental and weather conditions, followed immediately by emergence of a second generation of these beneficial predator flies.

*Newly emerged adult tachinid flies repeat the sequence all over again until cooling fall weather signals the last generation of the season to remain in the ground until the following spring.

There are a great many types of tachinid flies that "specialize" in parasitizing a wide variety of insects including caterpillars like cabbage loopers and moth larvae and, of course, beetles. Field studies have consistently shown that from 40 to 50% of Northern New England Japanese Beetle populations are currently being parasitized by this very efficient little fly. So, follow these two very important new "rules":

If, while scouting your garden for Japanese Beetles, you spot one or more small, 1 mm whitish dots glued just behind their heads, don’t — repeat: don’t — destroy them. I know that’s going to be difficult for most gardeners, but it’s been shown that those beetles very shortly fall to the ground to be quickly destroyed by an even more aggressive foe than us. . .and those beetles will never have the chance to lay any more eggs or harm your cherished plants!

Also important is avoidance of toxic chemicals — or even natural insecticides — that might destroy or hinder the highly-desirable activities of just about any outdoor, nectar-feeding fly. It’s all part of keeping a good thing going. . .and being a responsible gardener!

Fred Davis is a Master Gardener, Master Composter, lecturer, and long-time nurseryman. He and his wife, Linda, own and operate a popular perennial nursery in Palermo, Maine, and maintain a no-frills gardening information website at: http://www.HillGardens.com/

I currently rent my house and while I’m planning on buying later this year, I can’t refrain from obtaining new and interesting perennial plants right now. After all, it is spring out there and new plants have always been a major part of my spring activities. But, what can you do when you have a rented property and you’re planning on moving.

This afternoon, I decided to do some planting but I ran out of both pots and space to put them. There was a narrow strip along the side of the house that promised both shade and good visibility. The barbeque sat there along with a few other tools but these were all quickly moved into the garage. To make good gardening use of this space, I spread out black plastic bags to stop weeds or grass from growing and then set my new perennial pots out on the plastic. Leaving the plants in the pots, I arranged them as if I were planting them; tall plants to the back against the house siding, gold leaved next to dark green, and short plants to the front etc. Next I filled between all the pots with peat moss. The peat will keep the plant upright and protect the pots from drying out. When viewed from standing up, the pots disappear under the peat and the garden looks like it was planted. All I have to do is keep the peat moss damp and the plants will grow into a perennial garden.

When I leave this fall, I’ll simply pull up the pots, bag up the peat moss into the garbage bags and truck my plants to their new home. But in the meantime, I have what appears to be a garden, my waste space is occupied with plants and my plants will be happy.

Doug Green, an award winning garden author with 7 books published, answers gardening questions in his newsletter at http://www.gardening-tips-perennials.com

Shrub roses are an easy, colorful choice to use anywhere you would plant a shrub.

Sturdy and Plant-Friendly

Unlike many roses, Shrub Roses are perfect for planting anywhere. They’re "plant-friendly" and are good neighbors in any collection of flowers. Shrub Roses are also very winter-hardy, and they are highly disease-resistant.

These round, easily-maintained bushes are not small, either. Many older Shrub Roses can grow up to 6 feet in height. If desired, Shrub Roses can be trained to grow like tall hedges.

Privacy Screen or Hedge

Shrub roses are great as a screen or hedge plant for privacy, as a border, or a background. Although the flowers from Shrub Roses have little fragrance, they come in a wide assortment of vivid colors. Vibrant pinks, reds, whites, and yellows are all common for a shrub rose’s abundant flowers.

Ground Cover or Hanging Basket

Several modern shrub roses have been popularized in recent years. Ground covers such as Cliffs of Dover, Flower Carpet and Jeepers Creepers have been treasured by homeowners with sloped or uneven lawns.

They also grow wonderfully in hanging baskets and containers. Regardless which variety you choose, Shrub Roses can be a wonderful feature at the entrance to your home.

How to Plant

Make sure the plant is in a very sunny location. Most Shrub Roses require a minimum of 8 hours of full sun on a daily basis. The direct light combined with moist soil ensures maximum flower production.

Dig a hole that is double the width and depth of the pot your shrub comes in. Use a sharp instrument to cut the plant away from the sides of the pot. Disturb the roots as little as possible. Once you have the plant free from its container, place it in the hole. Fill in the remaining space with loose soil and soak the plant with water.

Practically Maintenance-Free

Fortunately, Shrub Roses require very little maintenance. During the summer months, you’ll probably need to water your shrubs twice a week. Keep the soil moist and you’re done.

For gorgeous results and optimal growth, use organic fertilizer on your roses in the spring and fall. Pruning is not necessary, because it is basically self-cleaning. Shrub roses release their own dead foliage, creating a neat appearance through every season.

Some of the prettiest roses are "ever blooming." Purchase this type of shrub rose, and you’ll have a recurrent bloomer that will flower profusely several times a year.

Before you plant another green shrub, consider planting a Shrub Rose instead. The most difficulty you’ll have with this plant is deciding which one to buy!

Ron King is a full-time researcher, writer, and web developer. Visit grow-roses-now to learn more about this fascinating hobby.

Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact.

Here are several tips for creating a wonderful hanging basket or container this summer. The first is to use an artificial soil composed mostly of peat moss. Good soils such as Fafard or Pro-Mix use perlite, peat, and other ingredients to produce a soil that will not compact over the summer. Real garden soil compacts and turns into concrete under the pressure of regular watering. And when it does, plant roots stop growing because they require good open spaces to move into and absorb nutrients. Hard, compacted soils do not grow good plants so do not use real soil in your containers. I re-use my artificial potting soil from year to year. I dump it out of the pot. Chew it up with a shovel to cut up all last year’s roots and add approximately 10 % by volume of compost. The compost increases air spaces and gives plants a boost in healthy nutrition.

Feed your plants weekly. Nitrogen, the engine of plant growth, is water soluble and as you water your containers from the top the dissolved nitrogen is leaving from the bottom. I use a fish-emulsion liquid feed with seaweed to provide all the trace nutrients my plants require and recommend it highly. You can use any liquid plant food (like Miracle Grow or Shultz) to promote growth. Compost tea is the Cadillac of liquid plant food and if you make your own compost tea, your plants will respond with bigger and better blooms as well as increased vigour.

And finally, no matter the size of the container, it is important to soak it all the way to the bottom at each watering. Continue watering until water emerges from the pot bottom. This ensures the roots can reach all parts of the container and grow properly.

Doug Green, an award winning garden author with 7 books published answers gardening questions and gives container gardening advice in his free newsletter at http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com

Boxelder bugs, sometimes called maple bugs, are relatively large insects, about 1/2” long, dark gray in color with red markings on their backs. The bugs are harmless. What makes them remarkable is their tendency to congregate on certain houses in the fall of the year, often in enormous numbers. It truly seems like an invasion — especially the first time it happens.

Here’s what’s going on. Boxelder bugs (see a color image at www.LivingWithBugs.com/boxelder.html) have one generation a year. Eggs are laid in early summer on maple trees (boxelder is a type of maple).Eggs hatch and the young nymphs feed on maple tree leaves during the summer. They do no apparent harm to the trees. The insects reach adulthood in fall and can fly. Adults abandon the trees on which they developed in search of a place to “overwinter”. Many insects overwinter. It is not really a state of hibernation, or diapause, but rather simply an inactive stage brought on by low temperature. Once warmed the insects resume activity. Insects seek protected places in which to overwinter.

Fall migrating boxelder bugs are attracted to large trees with dense, evergreen foliage like cedars. Trees with deeply fissured bark also are selected. Both must appear to be good overwintering sites. A single large tree might attract hundreds, or thousands, of boxelder bugs from the surrounding area. These bugs are strong fliers so may travel miles from the maple tree on which they developed. We now have a large tree with perhaps thousands of overwintering boxelder bugs — so far so good.

Let’s put this tree, full of bugs, near the sunny, southwest side of a house. When the house siding heats up during the day all of a sudden the nice warm house seems like a better place to overwinter than the tree. Presto, the bugs move en mass to the house. Imagine, a thousand, or more (seems like millions!), 1/2” bugs congregating on the outside of your house, around doors, windows and on siding. This actually happens to many people each fall, year after year.

What to do. First realize that these bugs are harmless. They don’t bite or sting, won’t hurt your house nor will they set up permanent residence. But even people who know all this freak out when confronted with all these bugs. Here are some suggestions. The most important thing is to prevent the bugs from getting indoors. If they do gain entry they will likely be around until spring. Repair window screens, caulk cracks around window and door frames and screen soffit vents.

Next, wash down aggregating masses of bugs with water spray from a garden hose then clean the siding with soapy water from a hose-end sprayer. A weak solution of laundry detergent is fine for this application. There is some evidence that washing the siding helps to discourage other bugs from congregating. Don’t use insecticidal sprays. Insecticides don’t work well on these semi-dormant insects and can be messy and dangerous. You may need to repeat this procedure every few days until the number of new bugs starts to drop.

On occasion large numbers of bugs will get into the attic or exterior wall voids of a house. Again, these insects cause no real harm but may be a nuisance. They will find a way into the home’s interior on warm winter days — probably the day of your dinner party. In this case it may be necessary to treat the attic and walls with insecticidal dust. Bugs found crawling around indoors should be removed with a vacuum cleaner. Don’t reach for the can of insecticide!

You may have concluded that the solution to this invasion problem is to remove the big tree. Sometimes this works but sometimes it does not. Sometimes the big tree is in your neighbor’s yard. Good luck!

Find related information at www.LivingWithBugs.com. Information about insecticidal dusts can be found at www.LivingWithBugs.com/use_dust.html

copyright 2005 http://www.LivingWithBugs.com

Jack DeAngelis, PhD
http://www.LivingWithBugs.com

Those wonderful green lawns many homeowners care about so much can be made much more healthy if we put them on a diet. Overfeeding causes as many problems with lawns as it does with people. Fat lawns are not healthy lawns. Rather than go on about this problem, let me simply tell you about the research at the University of Guelph.

Researcher Christopher Hallfound there was a way to promote health in the lawn by the frequency of the fertilizer application and the amount of fertilizer applied. According the Hall, fertilizer for lawns should be applied three times per year. One quarter of the fertilizer being applied should be applied in early summer, (not early spring) when the ground warms up and the grass is beginning to really grow. Another quarter is applied in late summer, around the middle of August when the fall rains are promoting growth, and the last half of the fertilizer is applied at the end of November to fatten up the roots for winter survival. This application rate was found to create a much denser turf than applications at other times all species and cultivars of grass.

It was particularly effective on perennial rye grass and tall fescues. The next question is how much food does the lawn need? Chris Hall at Guelph found that the turf did better if only 2 pounds of Nitrogen per 1000 square feet was used over the whole season. From the above paragraph, it can be seen that 1/4 pound is applied in early summer, 1/4 pound in late summer and 1 full pound in late November for the healthiest, thickest lawn.

Overfeeding produces thatch and weakened grass that is susceptible to pests and disease. It is also more costly. So, put your lawn on a diet for a better lawn.

Doug Green, an award winning garden author with 7 published books answers gardening questions in his free newsletter at http://www.beginner-gardening.com

In the summer, the sun is shining and everything is vibrant. Even the summer flowers are brighter and bolder. No meek pastels or pasty whites here; summer flower bulbs are vivacious. While less hardy plants are dried, brown, and dying, summer flowers are bright, alive, and thriving. Summer flower bulbs are flowers that bloom in the summer. Some examples are daylilies, lilies, gladiolus, dahlia, begonia, and caladium.

Summer flower bulbs should be planted in early spring. They need to be planted in an area with adequate drainage. Flower bulbs will rot in standing water. For this reason, they should never be planted at the bottom of a hill.

Summer flower bulbs vary in their sun requirements. Dahlias, lilies, and daylilies, for example, thrive in full sun to partial shade. Gladiolus, on the other hand, requires full sun and iris prefer partial shade. When planning your arrangement, pay special attention to the amount of sun your garden or flowerbed receives and pick your flower bulbs accordingly.

All summer flower bulbs require loose, workable soil. If the area has never been used for growing, add some compost or peat moss. Most bulbs will not require any special fertilization, but follow your package directions carefully.

These flowers work best in masses. For the best effect, do not plant a single bulb or a thin line of bulbs. They look best when they are clumped as in the wild.

Summer flower bulbs should be planted when the soil is dry and free-flowing. Did the hole six to eight inches deep, and place the bulb in with the pointed side facing up. Cover the hole with dirt and pack firmly. Water thoroughly.

If you plant your summer flower bulbs in an appropriate location and give them the most basic attention, you will be abundantly rewarded. When all the other plants and flowers are dying, you will have a bed of bright, vibrant flowers.

Flower Bulbs Info provides detailed information on wholesale, discount, spring, summer, and fall flower bulbs for sale, flower bulb catalog and company information, and advice on planting flower bulbs. Flower Bulbs Info is the sister site of Flower Delivery Web.