Neil Sperry's Mailbag

Dear Neil: What is the best variety of plums for our area? I missed another winter for planting and decided maybe I could find plants at the nursery.

Methley is the old fall-back variety. It's commonly available, perfectly adapted and self-pollinating (also serves as a pollinator tree for other varieties.) Bruce is another standard. Ozark Premier has outstanding flavor. All are sold in containers in Texas nurseries although supplies dwindle as spring progresses.

Dear Neil: I overseeded my lawn with rye last fall and now it is starting to die. I have bermuda and would like it to pick up the slack and look better quickly. What can I do?

Apply a high-nitrogen fertilizer if you have not recently done so. Water it in and wait for it to kick in and green up the bermuda. This is a process known as "transition" by professional turf people. Your lawn will look odd for only a week or two.

Dear Neil: I had a tree service dump a load of their chipped trees on my property. However, they must have ground up a few cedar trees for my load. I could see and smell them. Will the cedar chips hurt my plants? I understand that cedar retards growth of other plants.

Use the chips to mulch, not as a soil amendment. In that capacity they will be just fine. Apply them 1 to 2 inches deep. If there is much sawdust in with them they may try to form a crust on the soil's surface. Keep it broken up with a rake to ensure that water and nutrients can get past them.

Dear Neil: How can I keep my neighbor's bamboo from coming into my yard? With the spring rains it has jumped 15 feet past the property line and is growing several inches per night. What can I use to spray it?

I have seen people use one of the glyphosate herbicides at 150 percent the rate for bermudagrass with good results. However, you need several feet of bamboo shoot growth to have enough leaf surface to capture sufficient weedkiller. You will also lose any turf you have beneath it plus it will continue to sprout from other rhizomes. Your first step needs to be putting some type of a barricade in place along the boundary. It will need to be as permanent as corrugated fiberglass and it will need to extend 24 to 30 inches into the soil. Then and only then can you address the shoots as they show up.

People who plant bamboo end up causing untold problems for themselves and their neighbors. Good luck with this thankless task.

Dear Neil: I have a friend in the mountains in Virginia who wants to grow bermuda grass for his lawn. How much cold can it stand?

Bermuda is of tropical origin but it is more cold-hardy than St. Augustine.

However, when you get very far north the cool-season grasses really perform more reliably. He needs to consult with local authorities, but if winters go below zero very often he probably won't be happy with the bermuda. Lawns are not good places to experiment. You have too much invested in time and effort.

Dear Neil: I have portions of my Nellie R. Stevens holly that are brown and unsightly. They are scattered around the plant but they are more toward the bottom. What can I do to get it to fill in? I think it got too dry last summer.

Most plants do most of their growing at the tips of their branches. For that reason you probably won't be able to get it to fill in unless you do some pretty severe trimming. Take photos of the plant and get into a garden center. Ask the manager to mark on your photos exactly where you should make the cuts. Follow up with a high-nitrogen fertilizer and a deep soaking.

Dear Neil: I planted purple honeysuckle to hold an embankment. Now it looks like it has been invaded by green honeysuckle. Where would that have come from?

Hall's honeysuckle (green) is a common domestic plant. As such it gets mixed in with purple honeysuckle cuttings in the greenhouse every once in a while.

It's the more assertive of the two, plus it also seeds rather freely so it can take over quickly. Prune and grub it out before it takes over.

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