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Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m.
Here are a selection of questions and answers from the March 9 show:
Listen to the March 9 show here:
Read more:
- Garden Talk: What is the trick to using a banana to help orchids bloom?
- Garden Talk: How can I deal with aphids in 2025?
- Garden Talk: Tips for a healthy tropical houseplant like bird of paradise
- Garden Talk: Tips for planning a thriving home vegetable garden
These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What can I do to help a Benjamina ficus (weeping fig) tree that has dull, splotchy leaves and loses more leaves than it produces?
A: Benjamina ficus is one of those indoor house plants that has been around for years, it’s the most traditional deciduous tree that you could put indoors.
Benjamina (weeping fig) lose about a third to half their leaves every year. Just like the trees outside drop their leaves, indoor ones do the same. We call them weeping fig for a reason — they weep their leaves yearly.
Scrape the bark off some of the branches that have lost their leaves and see if there’s any green underneath. If there is, then you’re gonna get new growth on there and you can give it a light trim, but if it’s dead underneath just trim the branch right back to the main stock.
Don’t fertilize very much in the winter, maybe about once a month but right now you can fertilize every time you water. Make sure you check the soil by sticking your finger down a couple inches to make sure the soil is dry. Make sure the plant is evenly dry and then water it thoroughly.
As well as fertilizer, can add something like alfalfa pellets. Indoor plants need to take a vitamin every once in a while to get nutrients like calcium, boron, and magnesium, especially your older plants.
If you wanting less leaf drop, increase the light, maybe with a grow light. Even in a south or west window in Saskatchewan in the winter, our daylight hours decrease so much you’re still going to get leaves dropping.
Keep the room temperatures no cooler than about 15 C or the plant will go dormant. Ficus can be susceptible to spider mite — if you see any fine webbing on the leaves or the underside of the leaves, or there is pitting in the leaves or dull and splotchy leaves can be a sign of spider mite. Use End-All to get rid of them.
Q: When do praying mantis arrive at Dutch Growers? Is there a list we can put our name on?
A: You can call into the store and get put on a list, or pre-buy them and then we’ll just give you a call when you’re ready to pick up. Wait until your night temperatures are about 10 C before putting them outside, around the first week of June.
You can keep them in your fridge and they won’t hatch until you put them out. They usually take about seven days or seven to 10 days to hatch.
They will eat aphids but will only stay around where there’s food. So after they clear the area they’ll move on to the next place. When you release any beneficial insects, good spider mites or good ladybugs or praying mantis, have some little dishes of water around close to where you’re releasing them and if they don’t have that water source, they’re they’re definitely gonna go somewhere else where there is one.
Read Dutch Growers spring preparation checklist here.
Q: Deer have eaten the lower sections of cedars. Will they regrow in the spring? What can we do to support them this year?
A: Put some kind of a snow fence or burlap around them because they can still come back. As soon as the ground is thawed, usually around May 10, apply some 30-10-10 fertilizer and — depending where you live in Saskatchewan, but especially central and central parts — use some aluminum sulfate to lower the soil pH to about 6 .5 to 7.
If you’ve got space in front, you can always plant some lower shrubs or some smaller cedars in front to cover up the eaten spots.
Q: My bird of paradise plant has lots of fruit flies and what looks like cotton on the leaves. What can I do?
A: If it has cotton on your leaves, you have mealy bug as well as fruit flies. For both, you can use nematodes.
Fruit flies have a 10-day lifespan and two stages — a larvae stage in the soil and then an adult stage. You have to prevent the adults from laying eggs back into the soil.
Using sticky sticks to catch them is really important, but it’s also important to treat the soil.
You can leave a slice of potato or on top of the spoil at night and then remove the top part of soil. Do that a few times make sure you don’t leave the slice on more than more than like 12 hours.
The best way to apply nematodes is to use pot poppers. Make sure to keep the soil moist and use them along with a few sticky sticks. You can use End-All and spray it every 10 to 14 days or use a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol and wipe down the leaves.
Q: When’s the best time before spring to take poplar cuttings?
A: Take poplar cuttings late in March or the first week of April that are about pencil size thickness and about six inches long, then bundle them up and put them in a fridge or a cool room to keep them dormant until you’re ready to plant.
Q: What seeds should I be planting in mid-March in Saskatchewan?
A: If you don’t get tomatoes, peppers, onions and a lot of annual flowers going now then it’s going to be too late. Vegetables that mature between 90 to 120 days, should also be seeded them now.
Q: Can I save my 40-year-old black current bush that is really old looking, with the bark getting really thick and some parts breaking off?
A: As soon as the snow around the plant has melted, you can cut it down to whatever you want — in half or to a foot off the ground. Just remember that you’re probably not going to get very much fruit the first year after pruning.
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