popular What have you done today in the Garden?

My roses are in full sun. I keep the center open, for drying air circulation. If a variety gets a lot of black spot, I get rid of it.

A few spots happen to some roses, but not a lot. My biggest problem last year was rose whitefly. For some reason, mainly on the container roses, not the duck yard. Maybe the ducks eat them? I neemed the container roses. Now there are only two in containers.

Weeds, especially trailing blackberries and mint, are my biggest rose garden challenges. I'm working on those.

 

I gave up on hybrid tea roses . After all Portland is crowned ‘The City Of Roses.’ I tried growing them for years and no matter what I did they would look utterly despicable heavily covered with black spots, and it’s spread like wildfire. It was way to much to continually babysit them. Now I just grow other types of roses that are not susceptible to black spot.

 

This am -

Finished cutting down the Stanley plum, Nd cut most of the branches and trunks into moveable pieces.

Cut down an unwanted, weedy looking, messy, ugly, hybrid buddleia tree. The catalog said they grow 5 feet tall. This was more like 20 feet tall with 6 to 9 inch thick trunks.

That leaves one final unwanted plum tree to remove, the last of my fruit tree culling. I felt a little sad, looking at the buds swelling. But they are too much work, I I don't have a use for so many.

I also winter-pruned this multigraft Asian Plum tree, which I am keeping. Methley, Hollywood, and Shiro. They are such good plums! And not available in grocery stores. I cut back willowy top growth, 2 or 3 feet of growth, and thinned the rest. Now I can reach everything without a ladder, but most is too high for deer to reach.

 

Looks great and so much easier to harvest.