Peach Tree Plant - Keep Ants Off Your Peaches Fruits - Dwarf Fruit Trees

Dont get me wrong, but when it comes to our fruit trees, we dont really wanna share them with the ants. But i noticed that ants seems to love to eat the fruits in the trees, just as much as we do.

I am still in the process of researching what are the good benefits of ants in our garden. I know that ants are very hard working little fellows that every humans should learned from. They work so well together as a team, which humans might forget how to do so sometimes.

But as we (ants and humans) co-exist in this planet, ants seem to cross the path of humans, like getting interested in our fruits trees, for instance. We have several fruit trees in our little yard like peaches, nactarines, cherries, pears, apples, etc, and noticed that ants have the same goal like us, to taste and savor the juicy sweet taste of the fruits.


This is not one hundred percent guarantee that works, but try to paint the tree bark all around the tree to hopefully divert ants away from the fruit trees. We usually use the white paint that are safe for plants and ground. A white paint that are specially manufactured for bark or tree painting, to keep insects like ants stay in the ground, and not climb up the trees eating the fruits. Like other paints, you need brush to paint it to the bark. usually from the bottom of the bark, up to around two to three feet high around the tree bark. Paint will peel over time, so painting needs to be re-done again after few months. This method doesnot always fully work, but it minimized the ants population in the fruit trees.

It is also a good idea that none of the branches and leaves of the fruit trees are touching the house, building, decks, pools, or any other stuff, that may work as a trail for the ants to get through your fruit trees. Try to cut branches that our touching any areas that ants will use as a short cut or road to access your tree aside from the ground to the bark, which you can paint (as mentioned above).

The Buzzing Bees

Bees can easily be noticed in someones garden because of their bothering buzzing sound as they fly around and hop from one flower to the next. For many people, the presence of bees caused fear, uneasiness, and unpleasant stay outside because of their buzzing sounds and the common fear of getting stung by one of them. But bees will be hanging out in your garden just as you want to hangout in your garden. Just watch out for bees before you pick or touch a flower or fruit, a lot of times, they usally dont bother people if people dont bother them, they simply just wanna fly around and check out the plants like you do.

But dont you know that bees play a very important rule in anyones garden? Bees are the major pollinators in most fruits trees, flowers, and vegetable plants. We need bees in the garden to pollinate most plants, inorder for them to flower and/or to bear fruits.

Ladybugs Are Welcome

Ladybug is a type of a beetle and it is a very tiny insect that only measures around 1mm to 10mm. Probably the most common ladybug beetles are color red and/or orange with small black dots or spots in them. They are so tiny its hard to notice that they are present in your garden. But if you are curious about seeing one of them in your yard, closely examine some of the leaves and sometimes posts in your garden area, they might be there just crawling around.

Ladybugs eat aphids, which is one of the common pest problem in many garden. Having ladybug around eating aphids will surely help control the growth of aphids that are developed in plants. For most part, ladybugs are very benefecial to the garden knowing that they eat pests (aphids), so if you see ladybugs hanging out in your garden, its a great news because ladybugs usually make your garden healthier and eat aphids for you without resulting into nasty and unhealtly chemical pesticides and most likely commercial harmful sprays.

Holiday Greetings

Advance Holiday Greetings to ALL

Merry CHRISTMAS and Happy NEW YEAR!

From Our Family To Yours

Snowballs In The Garden

Snowballs Flower is called snowballs because its flowers resemble so much like bunch of snow balls. Each snowball flower is composed of tiny little white flowers that are formed together that shape like a round ball that make them look like a ball of snow. This is probably why this flower plant is called a Snowball Flower Plant. During regular days like spring and summer, the foliage of a snowball bush is color green, and the snowball-shaped flowers will usually bloom around spring time. Blooms start out greenish in color and as the flower matures over time during the season it turns lightier and lightier and turn into white.

During fall season, weeks after the snowball flowers run their course, the green foliage will turn into bright red colors and then before winter most of the leaves turns yellow then brown and falls off for the season. The whole bush of snowball flower plant, which is usually only around four (4) feet tall, looks nice during fall time with its leaves turn into nice red color.

©JAZEVOX. All Rights Reserved.

Crown Imperial Flower

In my recent post, i talked about some ways to get rid of moles in your garden and lawn areas.

Another known plant that supposedly have a foul smell that moles dont like is the Crown Imperial flowering bulb plant. We do have some of these plants mixed in with our tulip garden, but I dont think it work best as far as chasing the moles away because we still noticed mole presence in that garden.


Crown Imperial flower plant is a very unique looking flower, as shown in the photo above. As the name suggest, Crown Imperial, this plant resembles like a crown with its green pointy foliage, and at the same time the flowers looks like bunch of bells. Crown Imperials probably comes in many different colors but the colors I know is yellow and orange because those are what we have.

So if you have mole problems, you might try to plant this flower, Crown Imperial, to see if it will work for you. Even if it doesnt work very well with diverting the moles, they do looks really nice as a flower, that usually blooms duing spring times like the tulips.

Related article: Holey Moley!

Reading Level of this Blog

I got tag with this cool tag by my blogger friend Joy thru my other blog, Honestly FRESH. I decided to determine the Reading Level of this blog as well, and this is the result!

[REMOVE]

I think the result above states that if you are reading this blog (Planting Diary, now Gardeners Land) and understand the contents of this blog, you are a GENIUS for being able to understand the articles and posts!
Please feel to grab this tag, if you like to determine the reading level capability of your own blog as well. Have fun!

Squirrels That You Either Love or Hate

We love squirrels, simply because they look so cute and so adorable, dont you think so too? The picture posted above is a local squirrel we have in our area, having a snack next to one of our flower garden. She and her other fellow squirrels hang out a lot in this particular area of the yard because of the Oak Tree in the middle of the garden. Oak trees have oak nuts that falls from the trees that eventually grow into young oaks and years pass, will turn into giant oak trees as well. And one of the main reason why we love the squirrels hanging out in this garden is because they help us control the numbers of oak nuts that are mixed in with our garden, and eliminate the possibility of having them tiny trees growing in our yard and take over the whole area. Squirrels love to eat oak nuts, so when they are around, they help minimize the work of picking up these the nuts all over that fell from the tree, and let the squirrels do their job. Squirrels also eat pine cones so if you have pine trees and have a lot of pine cones more than you can decorate in your homes during Christmas times, squirrels can be a tremendous help with all the pine cones as well, since they just love to eat them as well.



The problem with squirrels in the yard, is that they are one of the main target for the dogs to chase and bark. Squirrels are wild, dogs are normally not trained to be friendly with wild squirrels, so if dogs are out in the yard of the time, it will minimize the chances of squirrels hanging out in your yard more often, and the less they hang-out, the more oak nuts and pine cones you have to pick up, that is if you have Oak Trees and Pine Trees in your neighborhood. If you live in a condominiums and apartments, these will certainly none of your worries.

In public parks, you noticed that there are some wild squirrels hanging out, and at the same time some signs that say DONT FEED THE WILD ANIMALS, like the squirrels. And you should try to honor these signs and not feed the squirrels in the parks because these will be one of the main reasons that they started bothering humans in those areas. If you feed these squirrels when you are not suppose to, you may not realize and see the danger yet because you see squirrels enjoying your foods, but for other people eating and snacking in the same areas, squirrels might bother them because of people who gave them the idea that people provides them foods. That is why you hear some people that really hate squirrels as well, these people might have unpleasant encounter with squirrels, while others just love them.

So squirrels have strong effects in humans, humans either just hate them, or just love them! And how you feel about squirrels will surely depends on where you live, what they do to you, how they behave towards you. If you have not seen a real squirrel before, but have seen the movie Ice Age, and Ice Age The Meltdown, these movies have lots of funny scenes about a squirrel and her nut, shows how a nut is so important to her, and how she do anything for her nut, for better and for worst...

What about you, do you love or hate squirrels? If you have good or bad experience about squirrels, we would love to hear it too.

Written and Photography by JAZEVOX. All Rights Reserved.

Holey Moley!

Holes and Moles, they seem to rhyme pretty good, dont you think? Holes and moles, also closely associate with each other because moles make holes and that is what they do basically, they tunnel underneath peoples yards, eat flower bulbs, and destroy landscaping lawns.

For all those who garden in their yard a lot, you are probably familiar or heard about moles. They are one of the gardeners worst nightmares. Moles love to be around beautiful gardens and lawns just like people do. But the problem about moles is that they dont treat the yards and lawns like gardeners do. For moles, flower bulbs is like a feeding freenzie, a playground full of free meals.



Moles are like ants, they tunnel in the ground, but ants are small creatures while moles are like rats, they are big, that is why they have more devastating effects in the gardens and lawns than tunneling ants. You cannot really see the tunnels they create but you can tell that they are tunneling below because part of your lawn and garden will have bulky and soft continues curves all around, and if you water these tunneled areas, these tunnels collapses and causing uneven and tiny canal-looking spots. And for meals, they love to eat flower bulbs specially tulips.

I never seen an actual mole, but i can see signs that they are positively present in a garden and/or lawn. Moles are hard to catch and get rid of, but there are some ways control them:

Mole Traps. You can buy mole traps in most gardening and home improvement stores. Most mole traps are mechanically design to fit in one of their tunnels and when the mole use the same tunnel again, they got trapped and clipped. Mole trap is not not our prefered method of hunting moles and keeping them out of our yard and lawns because having to deal with a dead moles body is quite unpleasant and eeky, and sometimes it wont work because moles do not always use the same tunnel again, they usually just make new tunnels.

Poison Foods. Get them to come to the meal, is the key. Attract the mole by using a poison foods that are design to attract moles and poison them, which you can usually buy in gardening and home improvement store as well. A lot of times you can just place them in their tunnel and get them to come back or place them where they are most frequent. Im sure there is a detailed instructions that will be included with the food poisoning product on how to apply them safely. We never apply this product in our yard because we have dogs. I would not recommend this in your yard to catch and get rid of moles if you have pets like cats and dogs because they might attracted to it as well and try to eat it. So better safe than sorry, if you have pets in the yard, this is not the best option for you.

Car Exhaust Suffocation. There are some specially designed hose/pipe for sale that you can use to mount in your car exhaust pipe and place the other end of the hose/pipe in one of the mole tunnel. It is designed to have the car exhaust blown to the mole tunnel and kill the mole with suffocation. This method is probably safer if you have pets in the yard, but might be quite complicated to use because you have to attach the device to your car and all. How to apply it should be included with the product when you purchase itm but I cannot give detail instruction here because we never used this method before.

Chicken Wires. Moles are specially attracted to flower bulbs because it is one of their favorite meals. So if you have flower gardens with bulbs, chances are moles will be tunneling underneath and go towards such garden. Chicken wire application method might work best if you are just planning and starting your garden, before any plants are planted in it. The chicken wire method is done by placing a chicken wire pool about a foot or two deep in your garden area to be, fill it with dirt and plant the flowers above it. This way, when the mole tunnel in your yard, the mole will be stopped outside where the chicken wires are and cannot access the bulbs planted inside the chicken wires. The problem with this process is that moles can start a tunel above your garden and get trap inside the chicken wires with all the bulbs in it. And the chicken wire method doesnt really eliminate the mole, it only diverts their tunneling flow hopefully.

Whichever method you choose, good luck! It is quite a challenge catching those holey moley! Feel free to leave your comments about this post as well.

All Rights Reserved. Written by JAZEVOX.

The Signs of Fall

I woke up this morning with thoughts about Autumn/Fall, a season that not all countries got the chance to experience. In the tropical climate there is basically two seasons, rainy days and summer days. There is no such thing as winter and fall like here in the US. Fall or autumn season does definitely has its own unique characteristics and interestings facts.


My hubby and I started talking about the things that change around us when its fall, and here are some of the things that we noticed as:

The Signs of Fall

People started cleaning up the rain gutters of their homes and replacing new gutter screens.

Spiders wanna force their way into your homes! So watch out, they could be just few inches away from your door, ready to sneak in when its open.

You started smelling smoke and seeing smoke in peoples chimney.

People started buying and bringing firewoods and logs and stack them near the fireplace.

The squirrels are double-time and last minute picking acorns for winter foods.

The leaves in the trees are turning yellows and reds.

People gear up with their leave blowers and rakes and started clearing up the yard full of leaves.

You started using your heater almost everyday and the electricity bill started rising!

You see a lot of flower bulbs for sale in most department stores, supermarkets and home improvement stores.

You need to warm/heat the car before you can drive and leave in the morning.

You see pumkins, lots and lots of pumkins, wherever! Decors, stores, farms, etc.

You started hearing the Christmas songs in the supermarket and seeing christmas decors for sale in the stores.

You will noticed more Christmas holiday movies advertised and being played on TV everyday.

You grab your jacket everytime you go out, even for a few minutes because getting cold out. In other words, it is hard to get out without wearing a jacket anymore.

Have a nice and wonderful Fall/Autumn spirit to all!

©JAZEVOX. All Rights Reserved.

Is there something we missed to mentioned here that you think is unique and will happen during fall season? We would like to hear it! Please leave comments :-)

Red Cherries Harvest

I took this cherries fresh from our cherry tree last summer (2007). We had to harvest them early before they totally ripen or else the birds would had a feast! This harvest (cherry tree picking) was the first year that we finally have a chance to really enjoy our cherries because somehow we learned how to outwit the birds for a change.


The cherries were only around 3/4 of an inch diameter each, not the biggest since we picked them earlier than we should, but it was big enough to enjoy eating it!

In this photography, I originally did not plan to have it crossed-stem, but each cherries wont stand on its own, and both cherries ended up the way it look in the photo, which i do like how it came out.

"Be The Blog" Award

What a nice surprise I got today; my blog, GardenersLand, previously PlantingDiary, has received an award this week, from the Waliz Diary blog. According to their site, "This award is presented to a successful blogger, one who can "be the blog" - making it their own, staying with it, interacting with the readers, and just plain having fun." I am passing the award along to the authors of the following blogs who all fit the bill:
Sweet Lullaby by Marie

and just recently discovered blog Outfit Inspirations by Simone
Thank you Waliz for this wonderful award and surprise! This is my first blog award ever!

Link Exchange with Co-Bloggers

Do you want to Exchange Link with this blog? Just leave me message (or comment) here with your URL and Short Blog Title, add the following link to your Blogroll or Link List:


URL: http://www.gardenersland.com
Blog Title: GardenersLand

As soon as I receive your message regarding Link Exchange, I will visit your blog to verify the link.

Or if you already added my blog to your blogroll or blog links, please let me know if you are also interested to exchange link with me!

Invite hummingbirds in your yard

One of my favorite moments in our garden are the times when the hummingbirds starts flying nearby, dropping by the yard to checkout the food feeder or different flowers in our yard. Hummingbirds are quite a small creatures, you might not always see them coming right away, but you will always know when they are there because of their noisy flapping wings. There are few occassions that i mistakenly hear the rapid flapping noise of their wings as a loud sounds of a big buzzing bee right in my ear, and those times are heart pumping scary moments. But there is no doubt that you will be so delighted to realize that hummingbirds are checking out your yard!



We do try some effort to let them come to our yard by setting up some hummingbird feeders that we bought from the store. Most hummingbird feeders are made of red material or if not clear glass with red contents because they seem to be normally attracted to the color red. You can buy hummingbird food mixture in many stores, just add water and ready to put in the feeder.



Aside from setting up hummingbird feeders, you can also plant some flowers that help attract hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are particularly attracted to colorful bright flowers specially with red colors in them. So if you want hummingbirds to come by to your yard, why not set up some hummingbird feeders or plant hummingbird attractant flowers. They are always so cool to be around the yard!



Facts about hummingbird:
Their heart beats 1400 times a minute!
Written By: JAZEVOX

Getting creative with floral arrangement

There is no must-follow rules to arrange flowers, there may be some popular ways to arrange flowers but there are limitless ways and possibilities that you can arrange your flowers your own ways. It is just a matter of being creative, exercising your mind and your imagination.

Out of nowhere, I came up with a way to display some of our daisies and bunch of rose petals. It all started when one day I noticed that we had so many daisies in our yard. The daisies were larger and heavier flowers than what the stem could support thats why some were just bowing to the ground. We did not add stick supports to the daisies because we had so many of them to even try doing it.


So I just cutted the daisies that are too heavy to stand up straight, leaving only an inch stem in each flower. I grab a bowl originally designed for floating candles and filled it with water halfway, then placed the cutted daisies in the water-filled bowl. And to give the arrangement some more decorative touches, I picked one rose and separate the petals to sprinkle them in between the daisies. The result is shown in the photo above. I thought it came out really nice.

So if you have flowers in your yard that might be hiding under the bushes, or grew in a wrong part of your yard where you cannot enjoy, there are ways that you can enjoy these flowers by bringing them inside your house and get creative with your floral arrangement. Just remember that the rule is no rule to being creative.

Written By: JAZEVOX

Behind the scene of our spotty lawn

We been having a lot of falling leaves in our lawn area these days from all the different trees that we have around the property. Obviously, the main reason why it is called Fall Season is because most leaves die down and fall from the trees at this time of year.

There are still a lot of leaves that are waiting to fall, but my hubby decided to clean up our lawn area that are full of leaves already. So I decided to take photos of it before he get rid of all the leaves in the ground. While i was taking photos, our lovely doggy suddenly squat in front of me and start peeing in the lawn.

We have two (2) doggies and noticed lately that we have dead spots all over our lawn area. I previously read in a magazine that female dogs urine cause dead spots in the lawn if they urinate in it and the homeowner would not dilute the area with water right away. But our dogs are both house dogs so when we let them out for potty outside we usually dont follow them to see where they do their business. But we noticed that one of them is having a habit of doing it in the lawn area, but we cannot pinpoint exactly which dog is actually doing it so that we can do something about it like train the dog or something. This photo totally break the ice and answer our question that been lingering in our heads for a while.

NOTE: Hope Im not offending anyone with this photo, nor am I a comedian by sharing this photo! Its part of my gardening story! Peace!

Deer, Ohh Deer!

Boy, oh boy! Looks like we have a fellow caught in the act snacking on our Hydrangea flowers that we bought for around $15 last summer! I woke up this morning and found this deer eating on our garden area. Our block wall is around two (2) feet tall, so you can tell that this deer is probably around three (3) feet in height?

Living here in northern CA, it is expected that sometimes deers will be checking out peoples yard for meals. And with all the flowers we have, they seem to love to check out are place quite more often. So we took extra effort of fencing part our yard to keep the deers out and keep our dogs in. But sometimes, deer take a gamble encountering with our dogs, they jump in our five (5) feet wire fenced easily sometimes and had to fight face to face with our doggies in some occassions. At this time of year, October-November, i noticed that they seem to be coming by in our yard more frequently, which is harder for us because we dont want anymore deadly encounter with our doggies and we dont want our flowers to be eaten.

 

Written By: JAZEVOX

Oak tree mushroom fungi

Few years ago, we had this beautiful Oak tree that we had to put down by professional tree cutter because it was too near the house and having a huge tree like next to a house is never such a great idea because the roots could penetrate in the foundation of a house, or in other cases, if the tree decided to fall and get uprooted during wet and stormy weather, it could fall in the house next to it specially if it is leaning more in that direction.


Few days ago, while I was taking some pictures of falling leaves in our lawn area this autumn season, I came across this mushroom growing in out cutted oak tree. It looks like a thin fan with multi-color shades of blacks or browns and some dark reds in the edges (see photo above). Im not sure this particular type of mushroom but if you want to read more about mushroom fungi in Oak trees, checkout The Mighty Oak and Its Mushrooms .

Written By: JAZEVOX

Stargazer Lily Flower (Part 2)

My last blog post (prior to this post) is also about the beautiful and majestic Stargazer Lily flowers. In my previous post, I talked about few great locations where you can plant the Stargazer Lily, as well as few tips to keep the plant in upright position when it becomes heavy and loaded with huge flower blooms.

Stargazer Lily flowers are widely popular because of its beauty, scent and simplicity. These flowers are prefect cut flowers to add natural decor inside your home or office. To use Stargazer Lily flowers as floral arrangements you usually need wide and tall base to accomodate these tall flowers without tipping the flower base and making a mess in your home or office. Stargazer Lily flower works great on its own or with other types of flowers combined. Either way it will looks nice both as a single flower in a base or as a group of the same flowers, depends on the type of flower base you have.



Stargazer Lily flowers are available in many different stunning colors but some of the most popular and are widely available for sale in most stores are the light white-pink combo, the all-white, and the deep pink ones. Some may not have that floral scent that makes Stargazer Lily a crowd favorite among many people, but to be sure, you can check the packaging label of the bulbs when you purchase it in the store to make sure that you are buying the scented one if that is what you are looking for.

Written By: JAZEVOX

Stargazer Lily Flower

I personally think that one of the most beautiful and simply attractive flower on earth is the Stargazer Lily flower. Its well-defined long petals (usually six of them in each flower) are grouped together to form like a star (see photo). Most Stargazer Lily have fresh floral scent that is hard to ignore, sometimes you can smell the scent by just passing nearby, or when the air blows in your direction. So having Lily plants near outdoor sitting area and near the windows is not a bad idea at all. Based on my personal experience, by just sitting near our window, I can occasionally smell the blooming scent of this magnificient flower.


Stargazer Lily flowers are mostly planted in bulb forms that you can buy in most home and garden stores during fall or autumn seasons. Just like most flower bulbs, Stargazer Lilies requires a well-drained soil plating area to elimimate the possible rotting of the bulbs. Stargazer Lilys full growing height are usually around 3-4 feet tall. In the contrary, you can also buy the miniature version ones which can grow full height at only around one foot.

When you decide to buy the tall ones that can grow 3-4 feet in height, it would be best that you have a handy stake near the plant usually stake made of like bamboo, plastic or metal bar to help support the stalk of the plant because some Stargazer Lily can produce 6-7 inches wide of flower that are heavy enough that may cause the stalk to bow down. So if you secure the plant with the support stake and a velcrow or adjustable garden tie, you can prevent the plant from bending or breaking and keep the whole plant upright specially that one plant can have 3 to 6 flower blooms all in one stalk than would easily outweight the stalk. Just make sure than you wont tie the plant to the stake very tightly, allow some room for the plant to grow bigger. The velcrow tie would be best fit, because you can easily move, adjust the tie as the flower plant grows over time.

Please feel free to leave your comments about this topic or this blog!

Written By: JAZEVOX

Time To Plant for Spring

If you are an avid gardener and looking forward to see beautiful floral colors in the springtime, fall season is the perfect time to start planning and take time to do planting of flower bulbs for possible bloom in the spring time.

Most home improvement stores like Lowes and Home Depot, warehouse stores like Costco and Sams Club, and other stores like K-Mart and Walmart usually sells wide variety of different types of flower bulbs at this time of year (September-October-November) because in most areas, fall season is the best time to plant flowering bulbs like tulips, daffodils, iris, etc.

It would be best to plant the bulbs before the danger of frost. So if you are thinking of giving some colors in your yard this coming spring, check out your nearest stores mentioned above for wide variety of different types of flowers in great deals.

We recently bought 100 bulbs of Daffodils for less than $15.00 And for gigantic bulbs, we got 80 pieces for $19.95

Written By: JAZEVOX

Fall Colors Japanese Maple Tree (Part C)

PART C. It is that time of year when it is absolutely perfect to take a drive and see the ever changing colors of the trees. Fall season is totally magical, the green trees turning multi-shades of red, brown, yellow, orange, and more. For this post i just want to share some of the photos I took this mid October 2007, showing the changing colors of our Japanese Maple Tree this fall season.

There is not enough words to describe, so hope you like the photos as well.

Written By: JAZEVOX

Fall Colors Japanese Maple Tree (Part B)

Part B. It is that time of year when it is absolutely perfect to take a drive and see the ever changing colors of the trees. Fall season is totally magical, the green trees turning multi-shades of red, brown, yellow, orange, and more. For this post i just want to share some of the photos I took this mid October 2007, showing the changing colors of our Japanese Maple Tree this fall season.

There is not enough words to describe, so hope you like the photos as well. Pictures speaks louder than words...

Written By: JAZEVOX

Fall Colors Japanese Maple Tree (Part A)

Part A. It is that time of year when it is absolutely perfect to take a drive and see the ever changing colors of the trees. Fall season is totally magical, the green trees turning multi-shades of red, brown, yellow, orange, and more. For this post i just want to share some of the photos I took this mid October 2007, showing the changing colors of our Japanese Maple Tree this fall season.

There is not enough words to describe, so hope you like the photos as well.

Written By: JAZEVOX