The earliest Mother's Day celebrations we know of were ancient Greek spring celebrations in honor of Rhea, the mother of the gods. But those were in honor of one particular mother. England's "Mothering Sunday," begun in the 1600's, is closer to what we think of as "Mother's Day." Celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent, "Mothering Sunday" honored the mothers of England.

In 1907 Anna Jarvis started a drive to establish a national Mother's Day. In 1907 she passed out 500 white carnations at her mother's church in West Virginia -- one for each mother in the congregation. In 1908, her mother's church held the first Mother's Day service, on May 10th (the second Sunday in May). That same day a special service was held at the Wanamaker Auditorium in Philadelphia, where Anna was from, which could seat no more than a third of the 15,000 people who showed up.

By 1909, churches in 46 states, Canada and Mexico were holding Mother's Day services. In the meantime, Ms. Jarvis had quit her job to campaign full time. She managed to get the World's Sunday School Association to help; they were a big factor in convincing legislators to support the idea. In 1912, West Virginia was the first state to designate an official Mother's Day. By 1914, the campaign had convinced Congress, which passed a joint resolution. President Woodrow Wilson signed the resolution, establishing an official national Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May.

Many countries of the world now have their own Mother's Day at different times of the year, but Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, and Turkey join the US in celebrating Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May. Britain still celebrates Mothering Day on the 4th Sunday of Lent — but they now call it Mother's Day. By any name, and at any date, it's a special day to honor a special person.

Have a gardening mother in your family and having trouble thinking of a gift? Bored with the usual chocolate and flowers? Try something different for Mother's Day this year! How about a gift planter?

Get a big flowerpot or a planter and fill it with things she can use in her garden! She'd surely appreciate a new pair of garden gloves, a selection of seeds, new small tools like trowels and clippers, knee pads, some good hand lotion, and other useful items she might not buy for herself.

It is the Merry Month of May here (and everywhere else in the world, including Camelot). Where has the beginning of the year gone?

This can be a busy time in the garden. There possibly are still chores from the winter; the weather is finally beautiful, so plant, plant, plant; and with all of the new vegetative and bud growth, there are insect pests back in our gardens. Here are some tips for you this month. This is a lot to ‘chew off’, so get ready!

Planting
Annuals and perennials abound in the garden center. Come to pick your favorites but do a favor, if you will. Try a new plant in your garden this year (or several). It’s fun to watch a new plant grow, and you may find one that becomes a new favorite. You just don’t know until you try.

The annual and perennial tables are so full it’s next to impossible to give you a full list of everything. But just to whet your gardening tastebuds, here’s a starting list: alyssum, asters, coreopsis, gaillardia, gaura, daisies, heliotrope, marigolds, petunias, penstemons, pentas, phlox, phygelium, rudbeckias, salvias galore, yarrow, verbena, vinca, zinnia. And much more.

Veggie Growers: Summer vegetables are in. Beans, eggplant, many kinds of peppers, tomatoes, and squashes. And of course, herbs such as rosemary, oregano, tarragon, parsley, thyme, stevia, mints and more.

Feed and Fertilize
Use organic fertilizers on your vegetables.

Reward your roses with a good feeding.

If your camellias and azaleas are still blooming, hold off on the feeding. Did you know that if you feed camellias while blooming, you will lose all of the wonderful flowers and buds yet to open? It's true. These acid loving plants will need to be fed, but not until they have completed their bloom cycle.

Pruning
This is the time of year to cut back and shape your shrubs such as brugmansia, abutilon , hibiscus, tibouchina, etc. This spring cutback and shaping will help increase your flower quantity.

Canna foliage is beautiful right now. After they bloom, some suggest a cut back to the ground. You might leave the foliage for a while, but eventually, canna foliage loses its beauty. At that point, your courage may rise for the stronger cutback!

Deadhead your petunias, pansies, snapdragons, roses, etc. This encourages more flowering. Pinching back new growth on most plants encourages new branching and a fuller look to the plant. If that’s a look you desire, pinch away! And don't forget to cut/pinch back your mums.

Pest and Disease Maintenance
Encourage (or release) beneficial insects into your gardens. You can do this by increasing the plant diversity and giving them habitat in which they'll not only arrive, but stay for a while. We can help you with some plant selections.

Who are the most obvious pests in our gardens right now? Aphids and rose slugs. You have several choices for treatment. A couple choices are a more natural or organic approach; and then there are the synthetic chemicals. Remember that insecticidal spray controls are not selective and will kill all insects, good and bad.

That rose slug guy is a tiny little green larva that hangs out on the underside of your rose shrub leaves. They eat little circles out of the leaf, sometimes almost skeletonizing the leaf. Just remember, unless you are growing roses for show, we don’t usually grow them for the leaves. We grow them for the flower. So choose your "pest in the garden" battle wisely. Remember, you can scale up, but you can’t reverse the chemical “nuclear bomb” of insecticides. Keep reading.

Aphids can be "squirted off" of your rose buds, etc,, with water. Both aphids and the rose slug can be sprayed.

Powdery mildew is popping up. Treat with a fungicide.

If you are in an area that had much rain all winter, with temperatures warming up, it is time to increase the garden and lawn watering.

Mulch, Mulch, Mulch.*

*We will always tell you to mulch. This does not mean mound up the mulch to 5 feet. It means continue to replenish the mulch and maintain a 2-4 inch blanket over your soil. So when you hear us singing the MULCH song, you know just what we mean!

Plant warm-season lawns and tall fescue this month. St. Augustine, Bermuda, and dichondra get off to a fast start when planted in May. (Hold off until June to plant zoysia). Salt-tolerant Adalayd grass can also be planted this month. It's too late to plant most cool-season grasses from seed, but tall fescues can be planted from sod. (Note that tall fescues use much more water than Bermuda or zoysia.)

Lawns can be planted in several ways: sown from seeds, plugged in from flats, or rolled out from sod like an instant carpet. Bermuda, zoysia, and Adalayd can also be planted from stolons. Whichever method you use, be sure to prepare the ground properly. Before beginning, decide whether to plant a warm- or cool-season lawn and choose a variety appropriate for your lawn needs.

Select the best variety for you. When you research grass types be sure to consult with successful neighborhood gardeners and the University of California Cooperative Extension Office. Consider these factors: St. Augustine is better adapted to shade than other lawn grasses but needs a lot of water. Dichondra is best used as a design element in small areas only. If you live close to a Bermuda golf course it will seed itself eventually into any cool-season lawn, making it look ratty. To minimize this, plant a hybrid or selected strain of Bermuda for your own lawn in the first place. As mentioned before, don't plant such troublemakers as bentgrass or Kentucky bluegrass--they'll die in the first drought. Common Bermuda and Santa Ana hybrid Bermuda grass are the two most drought-resistant choices.

Fertilize lawns. Continue to feed warm-season grasses this month, and in coastal zones apply fertilizer to cool-season lawns once more this month at the same rate as you have used during the winter. But in interior zones stop feeding cool-season lawns now, other than an occasional light application (one-fourth to one-half the normal dosage) applied only when necessary to maintain a healthy green color. Tests done by the University of California Division of Agriculture show that heavy feeding of cool-season grasses such as ryegrass, bluegrass, and fescue during the warm season of the year subjects them to unnecessary stress.

Check dichondra for flea beetles. Control flea beetles before they damage dichondra. These tiny black 1/25 inch long insects skeletonize leaves and cause brown areas that often are confused with dry spots or fertilizer burn. To look for the culprits get down on your hands and knees, put a piece of white paper on the lawn, and tap it. The beetles will jump on top and you'll be able to see them. Control them with a pesticide-containing fertilizer or spray with a product containing diazinon or chlorpyrifos.

Tomato hornworms are the larvae of a large sphinx moth that is about the size of a hummingbird. In spring the moth lays eggs on the underside of tomato (and related plants like pepper and eggplant) leaves, and the hornworm is quite small when it first emerges. However, they are big eaters (of leaves) and grow up quickly. Usually, you won't even discover this fellow until it is large--about 2 inches long and fat! They are quite distinctive, actually handsome with their diagonal white stripes and horns on the rear.

Don't be afraid of the hornworms. They look more frightening than they are. They don't bite or sting, just try to look big and ferocious. You can easily handpick to remove from your plants and just throw them away. When they are younger and smaller, use Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) as an effective management technique.

Some gardeners have a different approach to the tomato hornworm. While handpicking a hornworm, look to see if you find little white cocoons attached to its back. If you do see this, that cocoon is a pupating braconid wasp, which is a garden-friend predator. Capture the hornworm and keep it (or all of them) in a container, feeding them tomato leaves. You are creating a nursery for the braconid wasps that can then be released into your garden! These wasps will help control the hornworm population.

Other natural predators are birds and the larvae of the green lacewing. Plant your gardens to create an inviting habitat for all of these natural predators, and you'll control this voracious eater of your tomato leaves. Luckily, hornworms don't eat the tomato!

Easy Elegance roses are the result of complex crosses combining the beauty of Hybrid Tea roses with the hardiness and easy-care features of proven rose varieties. They are then grown on their own roots for increased hardiness. Best of all, each one of these low maintenance beauties produces incredibly fragrant blooms.

These roses can be incorporated into the landscape with other shrubs and perennials, are they can stand alone in a rose garden filled varieties form this outstanding collection. No matter where they are planted, you’ll find Easy Elegance Roses are not only beautiful to look but tough as nails too!

We have a great selection of Easy Elegance Roses and invite you to stop by soon to see them in their full bloom.

Do ladybugs really help control bad insects?

Answer:

They sure do! In fact, ladybugs are one of the most effective predatory insects around--and love to make a meal out of bad ones. But give them time to do their thing. If you get too impatient with them, they just might "fly away home." Make sure your garden friends are happy by providing them with water and shelter. Remember that good bugs are living creatures and they have feelings too.

It is best to release them in the evening or early morning, just after you have watered the garden. This will help keep them in the garden. It is also better to release them in small batches all around your garden than in one big group; otherwise, they might get all huffy and start duking it out for the territory.

Ladybugs are more likely to remain in your garden if there is a ready food supply. It is important to provide them with an alternative food source when meals of pest insects are scarce. Flowers produce nectar and pollen, which ladybugs also need to survive. Plan your garden to feed beneficial insects by choosing a variety of plants that will bloom as many months of the year as possible.

Don't be surprised if they leave after they have removed all your bad insects, though. They will only stick around for as long as there is a good food source in your garden.