Editor’s note: Throughout the growing season, Mike Hogan, OSU Extension educator for Agriculture and Natural Resources in Franklin County, will answer gardening and home landscape questions submitted by Dispatch readers. Send your questions to hogan.1@osu.edu.
Q: I planted an apple tree a couple of years ago and it has never produced fruit. My neighbor says that I need to plant another apple tree in order for it to bear fruit, is that accurate? I don’t have a lot of space to plant more trees in my yard.
A: Yes, that is accurate, but you don’t just need two trees, you need two different varieties. Apples are one of the fruits which require cross pollination from two different varieties to produce fruit because they are self-sterile.
You will need another apple variety which blooms at roughly the same time as your existing tree in order for pollination to occur so that the trees develop fruit. Crabapples can be used for cross pollination if the variety blooms at the same time as your apple variety.
Manchurian crabapple (Malus mandshurica) is commonly used to pollinate apple trees. Dwarf varieties of apple trees should be no more than 20 feet away from another tree for successful pollination. If space is an issue in your yard, get your neighbor to plant a tree on their side of the fence and you can both enjoy home-grown apples!
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Q: Are there any vegetables that come back year after year and do not require planting every spring?
A: Not many! Most of the vegetables we plant in this part of the world are annual plants, which means that they complete their life cycle in one season. Some of these vegetables may reseed themselves (think tomatoes or ground cherries), but rarely do such plants flourish.
There are, however, a few minor vegetables that are perennial plants, which means that the plant goes dormant in fall or winter and grows back the next season. Such vegetables include asparagus, which can produce those tasty early spring spears for 10 to 15 years with proper care; horseradish, which is a root crop used in sauces and condiments; Jerusalem artichiokes (or sunchokes), which produce edible underground tubers similar to potatoes; chives; and rhubarb, which is a beloved addition to fruit pies and preserves.
Q: Japanese beetles have been ravaging my yard for a few summers now. I have heard that Milky Spore can be a natural way to treat them, is this correct?
A: Grubs are the larval stage of the Japanese beetle, which feed on underground roots of lawn grasses. The adults, which will emerge several weeks from now, feed on foliage and flowers of herbaceous perennials, trees and shrubs.
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It is possible that only one of these two life stages will pose a problem for you, so you may not need to tackle both. Many insecticide treatments for lawn grubs are not necessary because grub numbers may not be high enough to create noticeable lawn damage. Many times, grubs are mistakenly blamed for turf dieback caused by other factors.
Miky Spore is the product name for a biological control product for Japanese beetle grubs. It is a naturally occurring bacteria which infects the grubs and kills them. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that this product is not reliably effective. It could take several years of reapplying the product to get effective control.
Another strategy would be to reduce adult populations later this spring and summer, to break the life cycle of this insect in your landscape. Adult beetles can easily be removed from plants. Simply knock them into a container of soapy water to kill them. Avoid the use of Japanese beetle traps, as these traps lure an over-abundance of insects to the vicinity of plants you are trying to protect.
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