Yardening June 2014 #3 into July

Jeff, I'm hoping your inspection goes well. There are some unscrupulous suppliers in the market, selling infected plants of all sorts. Hostas and roses come to mind.
We had ornamental plums and were inspected by the state when all the problems were requiring uprooting entire orchards. Ours were okay in that sense by produced small fruits and required clean up or they self-seeded like crazy. I think we have removed them all now, at least till next years' crop of seedlings. LOL
I finally completed the yew hedge, finished, done.I had borrowed a neighbors scaffolding to do the job, much safer that way. I returned it this AM. I had a lot of winter damage to remove and have some really bare spots to grow in. I'm going to try a few self-grafts on the arches to prevent future damage. I didn't realize yews could be grafted, so self-grafting should be easy.
I need to spend a day it the veggie garden and then on to the next project.

Thanks guys, just so very frustrating but I am so thankful for what I am able to do and really enjoy what time I do get to spend out in the garden. I have my good days when I can work for hours and really get things accomplished. Then there are those other days when I just chill out and relax.

Ric, sounds like quite a job with the yew hedge--glad to hear it's all done for now!

Holly, it sounds like the perfect solution--enjoy the garden when you can, and invite help for those other times! :-)

Thanks guys, I'll let you know how it goes!

Jeff, it's hard to have officials roaming one's garden looking for trouble, but I'm hoping you will fare well and be our eyes and ears for what to look for to recognize this contagion that wipes out Rhodies and kills Oaks. None of us wants to live without these plant families or helplessly watch them die. Hope you can take pictures and notes. Has she found any near any of us? How big a territory does this inspector cover? As Ric intimates there are far too many bad actors and blissfull ignorants in the wholesale/retail plant industry, so we all have to be eyes and ears on the ground.
Also, I'd be loathe to accept a 'replacement plant' from an identified distributor of this highly contagious disease...not in my rhodie collection!

Seq, how'd the inspection go today?

Hey, thanks for asking. The inspector was here for about an hour and a half. She was no joke either. She wore plastic bags over her boots while walking around my yard. She took samples from each of the plants I purchased from Greer recently including the entire plant that died and samples from two other plants that were showing 'symptoms'. The symptoms mirror the symptoms of many other common ailments so I'm not really worried. She said it should be about a month before I get any results. One good thing was that I asked her about my Giant Sequoia because its been losing some branches this summer. She took a sample of that and put it under a loop (a more advanced magnifying glass) and saw some black dots on a branch and she said she'd look it up and tell me what was going on. It wasn't as bad as I thought and she made me sign some documents and such. She was very thorough.

Wow! We'll look for you on the evening news! ;-)

Whew! I bet you're glad it's over.

Did you get a selfie with her and your Sequoiadendron gigantea....

Sounds like a kinda cool experience.

Continuing here

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1368183/