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This Benary Giant Coral zinnia passed the “wiggle test.” Gently shake the stem at its base. If it remains firm, go ahead and harvest.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Cupcake Blush and Purity cosmos will keep blooming until frost if harvested regularly.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Cool season flowers like these lavender sweet peas grow well when they're started indoors in late winter and planted outside in late March or early April.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Praying mantis oothecas (egg masses) will begin hatching once daytime temperatures warm above 70 degrees.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Praying mantis hatchlings disperse and begin hunting for insect prey. Many will fall victim to other predators, but some will survive and become pest control helpers.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Praying mantises are just one of the many natural predators of grasshoppers. They aren’t particular about which insects they will eat - if they can catch it, they will eat it.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Summer is just around the corner, and you might be itching to try your hand at growing cut flowers this season. You just can’t beat locally grown blooms for beauty, freshness and variety. Here are some helpful tips on how to grow great cut flowers for your enjoyment this year.

Choose a site that gets at least six to eight hours of sunlight and remove any weeds or debris. Incorporate 2 to 3 inches of well-aged compost into your soil. After planting, water your young plants or seeds often at first. Water deeply and less frequently once they are established.

There are many different perennial and annual cut flowers that grow well along the Wasatch Front. They each have their own bloom season and preference of when to be planted. Choose varieties of each type to ensure blooms for as long as possible.

Some perennial cut flowers can be planted now. They include peonies, roses, lavender and yarrow. It may take a year or two for some of these perennials to become established enough to offer long stems for cutting, but it will be worth the wait.

Cool season annuals should be planted in early spring or even in the fall with some protection for early spring blooms. We are not currently in those seasonal windows right now, but keep them in mind for future planting. Bachelor’s buttons, delphinium, corn cockle, Iceland poppies and sweet peas fall into this cool season category. If planted in the late spring or summer heat, these flowers may not thrive or even bloom at all.

Now is the time to plant warm season annuals. It might be a little late in the year to try to start seeds indoors; those should have been started weeks ago. Instead, try direct seeding varieties that mature quickly such as amaranth, cosmos, zinnias and sunflowers. Giant marigolds and celosia transplants can be found at your local garden center. These and other warm season annual flowers bloom quickly and can keep blooming until frost.

How to reduce coming grasshopper problems

Last fall we talked about how good the conditions were for grasshopper egg laying, and the grasshoppers didn’t let those perfect conditions go to waste. For most of the late winter and spring months, the conditions for egg survival have been good — mild and dry. If mild and dry conditions return, it will benefit egg hatch. If we have repeated cooler, wet weather like we did this past week, it will work against egg hatch.

Egg hatch (lasting three to four weeks) should begin very soon for the earliest species of damaging grasshoppers we see here in Utah County, followed by overlapping egg hatch for other species. We can’t do anything about the weather or how successful the egg hatch will be in Northern Utah, so here are some things we can do in our yards and gardens reduce our grasshopper problems this season.

• Use insect-excluding row covers to protect vegetable and cut flower crops.
• Scout for grasshoppers in the early evening when they are less active, hand-pick any adults and nymphs you find and drop them into a bucket of soapy water.
• Grasshoppers have many natural predators; protect these predators by using insecticides carefully and only as needed.
• Sprinkle insecticidal baits in the landscape to target newly hatching nymphs. Refresh the baits as recommended on the product label.
• Insecticides are effective against young nymphs but not against older nymphs and adults. You can spray the ground and non-flowering plants, if needed, with conventional insecticides that list grasshoppers on the label. Neem oil and pyrethrins can also be effective, but your primary focus should be the non-chemical methods.

Looking ahead to next year, keep in mind that egg laying begins in mid-summer. Female grasshoppers require bare soil for egg laying, so keeping exposed soil covered with mulch will reduce the number of eggs laid. Tilling the upper 2 inches of soil after the first frost in the fall can reduce egg survival by exposing and killing egg pods.