Evening gave viewers the chance to ask PNW Gardening Guru Ciscoe Morris some questions via Facebook – here are the best of the questions, and Ciscoe’s answers to everything from what’s wrong with my rhodys, to how to end the scourge of horsetails. Warning, he might not tell you what you want to hear.
From Steve Hurbin: “Ciscoe - I have something eating my rhododendron leaves. What is it and how do I get rid of it?”
Ciscoe Morris: “Steve, you have what I like to call a Jimmy Durante beetle, because it’s got a long nose. They’re also called weevils, and you can put a nematodes out under your rhody to kill the larvae, but you’ve got to do something different to get the weevils themselves. You have to wait till it’s nighttime, when they’re munching your leaves, and go out with a flashlight and get ‘em with the El Kabotski method, which is grasping the weevil between your thumb and forefinger and squishing. You’ve got to yell ‘El Kabotski’ when you squish ‘em – and they make a really satisfying pop.
Shiv Rai asks: “Ciscoe, I have a lot of yellow spots on my grass from my dog peeing on it. How do I get the grass to regrow?”
Ciscoe Morris: "Oh yeah the dog spots on the lawn, they are so hard to deal with. Because if you have a female dog and she's hanging out in the lawn, you're gonna get those spots because there's so much urea in the pee, it burns the grass. There are products you can use but you've gotta pour them right on after the dog goes, it's impossible. So if you got a female dog, take her for a lot of walks so she'll go pee on someone else’s lawn. If you've got a male dog, plant some kind of sacrificial tree like a juniper or something. It might kill the tree but your lawn won't have as many spots."
And finally from Megan Lathrop: How the heck do I get rid of horsetail?
Ciscoe Morris: "Oh Megan I hate to tell you - this is the worst weed on earth and you can't get rid of it no matter what you do. If you have horsetail in your garden it means you were bad in your last life. The only solution is sell your house and move. Do it in winter when the weed is dormant. Oh la la!"
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