It’s the dry season, and like all the other local gardeners, we’ll appreciate when the rain starts. This month we planted native plants generously donated to us from the Nature Coast chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society, but otherwise, our main focus has been tending (mainly watering) the other new plants this spring.
The swamp is dry, so we were able to lead a field trip of Hillsborough County master gardeners and Hillsborough County Raise the Bar 4H students through it. The 4H students helped by marking invasive Chinese tallow trees.
As we expected, the air potato vine returned to the woodland area with a vengeance.
We ordered air potato vine beetles from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and released them at the end of the month. This species of air potato vine beetle (Liliocentis Elena) eats the bulbil (potato) as well as the leaves, so we’re hoping they’ll reduce the number of vines in the future.
Commentaires