Chris McKeown
| Special to Cincinnati Enquirer
Blue-eyed cicadas and other facts
Kathrine Nero talks about cicadas with Sarah Kent, a community outreach manager at Great Parks of Hamilton County, including the rare blue-eyed cicada.
Kathrine Nero, Cincinnati Enquirer
There are specific traits that differentiate a true, experienced gardener from others who simply claim to be. The most important of these traits is having reasonable expectations of the plants you are trying to grow. This is especially true of annual plants, which include flowers and vegetable plants.
When we plant these plants in May, we do so knowing that they will start to die when the summer ends. It’s understandable that with the limited time that we are growing them, we want them to take off and thrive. We want blooms right away after we plant our flowers. We want fruit from our vegetables by July 4.
This is where, if you are not a true, experienced gardener, you might have unrealistic expectations. One of the most important lessons experienced gardeners learn and accept is that no one is in complete control of their garden.
Success in the garden starts with choosing the right plants for the right locations. Then they need to be planted properly. Then they need to be properly maintained. This is the stuff that experienced gardeners have mastered.
The experienced gardeners also find themselves with struggles and challenges too. When they do, they are usually caused by the one thing they can’t control. This would be the weather and the poor growing conditions the weather can create.
This has been a problem early in this growing season. In May, we had excessive rain and a lot of cool, cloudy days. Some of the annuals we planted have not grown and flowered much in the early weeks. Experienced gardeners understand this. They have tempered expectations and the patience to know the weather is turning and the flowers will start to take off and grow.
Flowers that prefer shade and moist soil have been doing fine. The flowers that you plant because they thrive in our hot, dry summers, like Lantana, are just sitting in the soil. If you are frustrated with your flowers so far this season, be patient. You live in the Midwest. The hot, dry days are moving in. When they do, your heat-beating annuals will thrive.
It’s always a good idea to regularly feed your annuals and vegetables. I like to feed my flowers with a fertilizer you add to your water. Fertilome has one called Blooming and Rooting Plant Food. What you are looking for from fertilizing is right in the name of this product. You need your plants to have healthy roots to produce more blooms.
This fertilizer is 58% phosphorus, which is what you need to encourage both root growth and more blooms. Here at our garden store the water in our greenhouse contains fertilizer. We feed every time we water. You do not need to feed this often, but once or twice a week will make a big difference for healthier flowers.
A few things about those cicadas
Many of us on the east side of town have had another perceived major challenge in our yards besides the weather: cicadas. There is always a concern that the cicadas are going to hurt or even kill plants, more specifically young trees. This is simply not true. In reality, the arrival of these insects brings much more benefit than harm to the landscape.
When the cicadas emerge from the soil, they create thousands of holes aerating the soil. The females lay eggs in the thin branches of trees. When they are doing this, branches are broken. This is actually beneficial to the tree. It is similar to a light pruning, which stimulates growth. The trees will become lusher.
The cicadas are also a great food source for birds and other wildlife. Then, as the cicadas die, they will fertilize your soil as they decompose. So, as this brood starts to die off, you can be glad to see them go but also be grateful for the benefits they provided.