County Extension

 If you haven’t already figured it out, Southeastern North Carolina is one of the worst places in the world to grow turfgrasses. We sometimes have winter temperatures that cause injury to warm-season grasses like centipede and St. Augustine. It’s just too blasted hot in the summer for even the most heat-tolerant, cool-season grasses like tall fescue to survive. Throw in weeds, ground pearls, high pH, large patch, dollar spot, chinch bugs and all of the other issues and you have tough turf growing conditions.

Crape myrtles are important flowering trees for our landscapes and a personal favorite of mine.

Hot weather makes me and these tough plants happy. Thanks to some of the good folks at the University of Georgia, there is a whole new reason to get excited about crape myrtles; the Razzle Dazzle series of dwarf selections. 

When most people think about flowering cherries for the landscape, their thoughts go directly to Washington, D.C.’s tidal basin and the Yoshino cherries that herald spring each year.
This generous gift from the Japanese government back in the early part of the 20th century makes a spectacular, if short-lived, show, but Yoshino isn’t the easiest plant to grow in our conditions. If you must have flowering cherries, consider several others that tend to hold up better in the heat and humidity of southeastern North Carolina.

The brutal heat and humidity arrived a little early this year even though things have moderated somewhat in the last few days. Extreme conditions always help us sort out the plant winners and losers. Let’s take a look at some of those.