Garden Talk: How can I deal with aphids in 2025?

Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Here is a  selection of questions and answers from the Jan. 5, 2025 show:

Read more:

• Garden Talk: Plan ahead for a delicious raspberry harvest in 2025
• Garden Talk: Indoor grow room plantings can breathe life into winter
• Garden Talk: Protect your trees from pests over winter
• Garden Talk: How can I stop deer eating my cedars?

Q: What can I do to deal with aphids in 2025?

A: There are a few things you can do:

• Clean up your yard in spring. Remove debris off your grass areas but leave it alone until later in your shrubs because that’s where the ladybugs live in the winter. Leave that until it warms up a little bit and you start seeing new growth on the trees. That’s when the ladybugs can start feeding and come out of the ground.
• Use a blast of cold water when you see lots of aphids. That will disperse them and works really well.
• Get some praying mantis. You can pick them up in the garden centre, and even place an order early. Temperatures need to be about 10 C to hatch them outside, so do that in June.
• Make sure that you have a water source in your garden and a place that birds can survive. Put wren houses out now, because they eat so many aphids. If you have chickadees and wrens, you will see them in the shrubs going from branch to branch to branch eating constantly, all day long.

See Dutch Growers Praying Mantis Info and Care Guide here.

Q: When is the best time to pot up geraniums kept in cold storage?

A: Start in the middle of January. Take them out of the paper bags, give them a trim and put them into your pot. Then start watering them and give them lots of light.

With geraniums, you want to get new growth on them and then take cuttings from that new growth, then plant those cuttings. That’s why you’re starting them so early, you need time to root those cuttings.

If you don’t want to propagate them you can wait longer and do it about end of January or the beginning of February. The the key to success that is your plants are going to be a little bit lanky. So trim them back to about one third of the size, let it grow a little bit and then give it another trim once you get about two or three leaf sets, so that it gets nice and bushy.

If you see any blooms cut those off so that it can start forcing some new growth on the bottom of the plant in the roots.

Q: Why is my orange tree is losing its leaves?

A: It is completely normal. When our daylight hours are short it’s gonna drop leaves. Sometimes you will get blooms on it with no leaves and it will start to fruit.

Oranges grow in Florida and places like that so are used to having longer daylight hours. With only six hours of sunlight in winter in Saskatchewan they drop their leaves to sustain the plant.

The biggest thing with the orange tree is make sure you don’t change too much while you’re doing it. Decrease your watering a little bit, and when it drops its leaves don’t get scared and start to overwater or underwater it. Make sure you’re sticking your finger into the soil about one to two inches deep and water when it feels a little bit dry to the touch. Also keep it in a bright sunny location.

In March it will start getting new growth on it again. It needs to be kept at about 17 C, and not too much cooler than that because it is tropical plant. Make sure you have some humidity in the room too, like a pebble tray or a bucket of water in that room.

Also watch for spider mite — check the underside of the leaves every 14 days and have a spray bottle of End All on hand to attack any infestation early.

At the end of February or beginning of March, use a fertilizer that is specialized for citrus plants especially if the pH in your water is high. Citrus fertilizers are more acidic, and it’s important to keep the pH of your soil around 6.5. If you don’t can find citrus fertilizer, you can use regular fertilizer and apply some aluminum sulfate at the same time.

Q: How do I care for a Christmas Rose (helleborus Jacob)?

A: Helleborus is actually a perennial in a warmer climate bit it Saskatchewan care for it like a begonia or a geranium.

You can put it outside in the summer in a part sun, part shady location and it will continue to bloom. Then you can bring it inside for the winter and trim it back a bit. They tend to bloom when the weather’s cooler.

Perennials have a life cycle where they need to go dormant for a period of time too, especially after blooming.

Read more:

• Garden Talk: Plan ahead for a delicious raspberry harvest in 2025
• Garden Talk: Indoor grow room plantings can breathe life into winter
• Garden Talk: Protect your trees from pests over winter
• Garden Talk: How can I stop deer eating my cedars?