Tholens' Bucks are a reward program open to all of our customers! You can earn $1.00 in Tholens' Bucks for every $10.00 you spend on regular priced merchandise until July 14, 2010. You can then spend your Bucks for up to half your purchase from July 16 - August 4, 2010. If you have not spent your Bucks at the 50% redemption time, you can spend them from September 9 - 12, 2010 for up to 25% of your purchase. It's our way of saying, "Thank You!"

The color of some hydrangea flowers is effected by your soil pH. For example, if you have a high pH, or "sweet" soil, your macrophylla type hydrangea will have pink flowers. If your soil has a lower pH (acidic) your flowers will be more blue. So what is the chemistry? At lower pH levels the free aluminum in the soil can be absorbed and voila, the flowers will start turning blue. Certainly you think, this is a fine time to find this out, but never fear, there is a "solution" to your problem. That solution is Aluminum Sulphate dissolved in water. It can take more than one season to change the pH enough to change your flower color. We recommend that you get an inexpensive soil pH test kit to make sure that you do not go too far in either direction, before your flowers change color. You can purchase a pH test kit and Fertilome brand Aluminum Sulphate at either Tholens' location.

Bagworms have been wreaking havoc on evergreens in our area for the last few years. A bagworm is a hungry little worm, that can kill your tree within a few years if no control is provided. The life cycle of the bagworm (simplified) goes: In the spring the bagworm egg hatches and the tiny larvae look for a suitable host plant. After they find somewhere to live, (usually on the tree it hatched on, it was good enough for Mom!)they start eating and creating their bag. They will open the bag and eat, when you disturb them they will stick their head back in. By mid August, the worms and bags have gotten quite large, you may then notice them for the first time, and by September some of the bags may even be empty. The male bagworm is now flying around looking for females. Soon after the females will lay the eggs and die, surrounding her eggs as insulation for them to get through the winter.

Okay, so now that we have our entomology lesson, how do we kill these things? The best time of year to kill the worm is when it is a young larvae, before he creates his bag. We know that the bagworm egg usually hatches in late May or Early June. Interestingly, a former state nursery inspector noticed that the bagworm eggs hatch at the same time the Catalpa trees or Annabell hydrangeas flower. This is the best time to spray! We recommend spraying with Hi-Yield® 38plus, it is available at either Tholens' location. It is a permethrin insecticide that provides a quick kill to bagworms. We recommend a second application 2 weeks later to kill any worms which you may have missed. We have a bagworm call list, so when the time is right, we will call you and leave you a message to get out and spray. Call us at 815-939-9670 and ask to be put on "The Bagworm Call List".

Most likely your crabgrass preventer was working, until August, and then it ran out for the season. Most people in our area fall into the early application trap each year. Large box stores and fertilizer companies have national advertising campaigns, so in early April when you see the ads for crabgrass preventer, it is really too early in Northern Illinois to apply crabgrass preventer.

Crabgrass seed will not germinate until the soil temperature reaches near 60º, in our area that is usually not until the end of May. The active ingredient in Fertilome's© Crabgrass Preventer plus Lawn Food is Team™, it lasts 12-16 weeks in your lawn. So if you applied it at the beginning of April, it would run out by the middle of July. Instead if it is applied in early-mid May (or so, depending on the year) it will last until September, when the crabgrass is declining anyway! Another important key to crabgrass prevention is to keep your mower height above 2.5 inches. The thicker and healthier your grass is, the less space there is for crabgrass to fill in! Proper application timing is the key! And please remember that Crabgrass Preventer will prevent desirable turf grass seeds from germinating, so you need to time your applications appropriately, if you need to reseed your lawn.

Mulch: The mulch that we carry in bulk is Hardwood Bark Mulch, it is the only mulch that we recommend you use around your home or other buildings. So let’s start with the composition of the main types of mulch and then we can discuss the merits of each. Hardwood Bark Mulch is a by-product of the paper milling industry. When the hardwood trees are harvested, the bark is stripped off the tree and sold to a mulch company. The mulch we carry is composted for one year and then run through the shredding machine two times. There is a miniscule amount of wood content in the bark mulch, so we know that it is the best product for this area! Red dyed Mulch generally is comprised of recycled pallet wood which is chopped and then dyed to the desired color. Cypress Mulch labeling rules require that the bag contains a minimum of 10% cypress wood. That means that the other 90% of the bag could be any type of wood! Western Red Cedar Mulch is just that, it should be 100% western red cedar. We carry this mulch in bags only. It is the only mulch that we would recommend outside of Hardwood Bark Mulch. So what is the problem with all these other types of mulch besides bark? Simply put, bark is the protective layer of the tree, which keeps bugs out. So bark mulch is not an attractant to wood loving insects. Obviously pallet wood and other types of wood (other than cedar) would be attractive to termites or carpenter ants. The second concern when using mulch in your yard, is whether it is composted or not. When mulch (or wood) decomposes it requires nitrogen for the process. If the mulch is not composted when it is laid down, it will rob nitrogen to break down. For these reasons we only recommend the use of Hardwood Bark Mulch around structures on your property!

Peach Leaf Curl is caused by fungal spores which overwinter on the bark of your peach tree. Each year the spores are splashed onto the new leaves of your tree by rain. The spores then infect the leaves, causing the distortion that you see. Those leaves will drop from the tree prematurely and can greatly weaken your tree as the infestation will likely worsen each year.

To treat your tree, you should spray it with either Daconil or Lime Sulphur Spray as soon as the foliage drops in the fall. It can also be sprayed as the buds begin to swell in the spring. If your tree was heavily infested this year, you should spray in both the spring and fall. Don't forget to also fertilize your trees early in the spring, to replace many of the nutrients which were not photosynthesized by the infected leaves! Visit either store to get Fertilome's Improved Lime Sulphur Spray or Lawn & Garden Fungicide and Fertilome's Fruit Tree Fertilizer.

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