Doug’s Garden Blog

Where the author gets to speak his gardening mind

Dear Friends

The posts below are varied and who really knows what strikes my gardener’s mind.

Which is another way of saying, this is my personal garden blog and I tend to write whatever strikes my fancy about my garden – both the good and the bad.

• Free Organic Gardening Downloads Here’s a treasure trove of free organic downloads. Do scroll down past the dairy farm information. 🙂 The only “problem” is the information is aimed at farmers so the scale to the home garden is going to be a bit “off”. But the data – particularly around things like the fruit tree growing material is ...
• Coronavirus-19 and Gardening I am not a medical doctor nor do I pretend to know more than one. Let’s start at the beginning. I am not a medical doctor nor do I pretend to know more than one. I don’t even play one on television. The data here is gleaned from sources across the Net (all are linked so ...
• Got A Gardening Question? OK, so you have a gardening question… Is it something you need to know today? Yes. Call a local garden center. (I can’t guarantee quick answers -or any answers.) No. It’s not an emergency. See below Did You Do A Search On This Site? Please do a search before you ask. There’s a massive amount of ...
• Random Thoughts For April 2020 After Sitting In My Garden It’s important to take a few minutes amidst the chaos of today’s news Photo by Marc A. Sporys on Unsplash Well now, have you looked outside – really taken a good look – and noticed the important things in life are still standing amidst the carnage of this virus. The sky is still blue and the air is ...
• A Hellebore Helped Ease The Darkness Of This Spring I don’t know about you, but I confess to being fairly depressed about the news and I’m more than a bit cranky about how some politicians are treating this virus problem. It’s hard to be positive about a great many things. Understand I live in the country with our nearest neighbours around ...
• My September 2019 Garden Report September 2019 marks an important milestone in my garden writing life. For the first time in decades, I’m slowly down in a major way to post once a month here. Did I Post On Facebook I Was Retiring ? I said I was slowing down on garden writing but picking up the slack with other ...
• Here’s What’s Happening In My Early September Garden Rebuilding. The garden – indeed all parts of my garden – are getting a serious makeover this fall and the September garden is getting the biggest change. The Vegetable Garden I’ve written about why we have to move the garden here. And step one is underway. I stripped the top layer of grass off the intended garden area with ...
• I’m Headed For September Gardening If the summer heat in August is waning, it’s time to start dry stone wall building and getting ready for a big September transplant and rebuilding push. Notes On The Dry Stone Wall The pic below shows the east wall and the corner turning across the front of the house. Turning the corner and heading ...
• Introducing Fort Mayo: Our Backyard Vegetable Garden I’d like to introduce Fort Mayo. This is our way of stopping the deer, rabbits and maybe even the chipmunks from eating more of our vegetable garden than we do. Construction Details I put 2×4’s into the ground and strung a top and bottom stringer between them. These stringers support a 24-inch tall length of hardware cloth ...
• And So It Begins It’s been an interesting few years in my gardens – and indeed in my life – as the Internet morphed, the creative clock ticked and the gardens struggled against the weather and environment. Let me say right up front I really love plants. Don’t ask me why but there’s something about seeing them grow that speaks ...
• Doug’s Nine Gardening Rules I’m Doug Green, a semi-retired nurseryman, and award-winning author who used to grow 1600 varieties of perennials and 600-800 varieties of annuals and vegetables in my nursery before closing it down to write full time. I’ve been growing and passing along practical gardening information for over 40 years now and I’m happy to help you ...
• Garden Report For May 2019 It was the best of times, it was the worst… Yes, it’s been one of those springs. The kind we all look at and wonder just what happened out there and why it happened to us. I’ve written about the incredible vole problem we had and this past month was mostly taken up with fixing the damage ...
• Can Red LED Lighting Control Powdery Mildew Get Out The Red LED Christmas Lights Recent research by S. Suthaparan et al at the Dept of Plant Pathology at Cornell U, Geneva, NY has shown a rather interesting phenomenon It turns out that by exposing plants to red light from LED for as little as one hour at night can whack powdery mildew In some way, ...
• Doug, Tell Us How You Really Feel I am officially …..-off about my garden this spring. I’ve already written about the damage voles did to my garden, but as spring unfurls it turns out I was optimistic in that previous post. They Got The Evergreens They also got the evergreens. I mean… seriously. This week while working out in the front ...
• Mown Grass Fragrance Good For You Oh oh! Guys everywhere are going to hear about this one as it turns out freshly mowed grass releases at least 5 different hormone fragrances – and they make you feel better. So mowing the grass is good for you. And an Australian researcher is creating a product you can spray on yourself to reduce stress (he’s ...
• Insecticidal and Antioxidant activities Of Mint The oils of Mentha pulegium and Mentha rotundifolia (Mints) were distilled and then tested for their antimicrobial abilities. (If you’re interested in the specific oils/properties etc check the link to the abstract at the end of the note) Bottom line though is that both mint species had a strong microbial activity (they killed bacteria) and they ...
• Visit A 1000 Year Old Book On The Medicinal Use Of Plants Here’s a link to an illustrated book on the Medicinal Use of Plants.  Mind you, it’s 1000 years old.   I thought it was interesting to see the pages even though it’s in old English and I don’t even begin to read that. “The book, writes the British Library’s Alison Hudson, “is the only surviving illustrated ...
• Four Easy Mechanical Weed Reduction Strategies You Can Do Yourself These 4 simple techniques can actually reduce your weed infestations in the home vegetable and flower garden. They’re not normally covered in gardening courses so I thought I’d pass them along as things I do some of the time and all of the time. Minimize soil disturbance There’s weed seed just sitting there below the germination level ...
• Here’s Why You Should Stop Buying Expensive Fertilizers There are a great many fertilizers and soilless mixes that promise to add microbiological agents (mostly mycorrhiza) and charge you extra for these. I’ve never bothered with them because container crops are so short term and you’re not using soil so the addition imho is useless. You’re not going to create a soil food chain in ...
• Garden Zones and How To Cheat Them Garden Zones and How To Cheat Them
• Plants Know What’s Eating Them And Respond Differently “Scientists and gardeners alike study and examine plants for outward signs of damage caused by disease and insects. Often, this damage takes the shape of areas chewed by insects that are easily observed. However, much of the important responses plants make to insect bites takes place out of sight. In one of the broadest studies of ...
• Grow Your Own Slug Repellent If you are growing Saponaria officinalis (soapwort) in your alpine garden (it’s a purple, spring-blooming, easy perennial) then you ‘may’ have the beginnings of a slug repellent. Extract of saponaria was mixed with methanol and brushed on leaves (they used rapeseed plants) and found that slugs avoided the brushed leaves So what we have here is a ...
• Download The Illustrated Guide to Safe Produce This Illustrated Guide to Safe Produce is probably not overly relevant to you but it’s really cool nevertheless. It’s one of the first “comic book” or graphic novels I’ve seen aimed at farmers. If you check out the “graphic novel” section of your local bookstore (and no it’s not “that kind” of graphic novel) 🙂 you’re ...
• How the Blueberry Helps Bone Creation Well, it’s only in rats so far but the data is pretty clear that rats fed with food with 10% blueberry powder (as babies to early adulthood) developed more bone density with associated reductions in osteosporosis (brittle bones) in maturity OK, so go and plant some blueberries. Pretty interesting – and another great reason to eat blueberries ...
• You Need To Protect Your Sweet Peppers Earlier Than You Think While I knew that cool nights weren’t good for sweet peppers, I didn’t realize how early those cool nights were able to influence pepper size and development Turns out that a cool night when the blossoms are forming or about to open (yes, that early in the development) causes the ovary to swell up and disfigure ...
• Four Guidelines To Create A Stunning Vegetable Garden Design Four Guidelines To Create A Stunning Vegetable Garden Design
• Easy Plant Labels For Vegetable Gardens Easy Plant Labels For Vegetable Gardens
• Download High Tunnel Vegetable Gardening Download High Tunnel Vegetable Gardening
• My Large Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening Project My Large Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening Project
• The Five Easy Vegetables To Start Gardening The Five Easy Vegetables To Start Gardening
• Wherein The Garden Writer Loses It Yeah, you caught me on a down day. We all have days when it’s almost too much trouble to get out of bed, but when I wandered around the Net looking at some of the current garden blogs, I had to wonder. These people seem to love every aspect of their gardens – and ...
• Garden Tool Review: Korean Plow Hoe This Korean plow hoe review (also called a ho-mi or weed-eze or EZ-Digger) is based on my own gardening experiences and opinions and may vary from yours. It is also based on over 30 years of practical gardening experience. (that’s what you call a disclaimer) 🙂 This tool is advertised as being a planting, cultivation and ...
• What Happens When You Wander About Your Garden With Closed Eyes? I’ve taken to sitting and wandering in my garden with my eyes closed.  It’s an interesting experiment in gardening and one I recommend to each of you.  You see, I don’t think we truly appreciate how fortunate we are to be able to see the flowers and plants in our gardens but this fortune comes ...
• Grow Your Own MicroGreens and Get Healthy Grow Your Own MicroGreens and Get Healthy
• What Happens When You Publish 187 Posts All At Once OK, so I managed to post 187 posts all at once to Facebook and the resulting flood on my timeline was nothing short of spectacular. It was confusing until I figured it out – but spectacular nevertheless. As an aside, every time I post on Facebook, they ask me to advertise the post (“boost it” ...
• You Don’t Have to Do Reality Gardening As regular readers know, I’ve been doing a series of “real” shots of my gardens and the very real problems I’m dealing with this year. There are precious few glamour “reality gardening” shots because I’m shooting with my cell phone and simply posting what that camera sees. And I’m getting some great feedback – comments that ...
• I’m Growing The All America Seeds In My 2019 Garden Trials The seeds that I am testing and growing for the All America seeds this year include: Vegetable Seeds Watermelon, ‘Mini Love’ Watermelon: Cal Sweet Bush Pepper : Just Sweet Potato: Clancy Tomato: Fire Fly Tomato: Red Torch Tomato: Cocktail, Red Racer Potato ‘Clancy’ Flower Seeds Marigold: Big Duck Gold Petunia: Carmen Velour Wave Begonia: Viking XL Red on Chocolate Zinnia: Holi Scarlet ...
• Will My Plants Survive The Polar Vortex? If you live in an area that’s been hit by the recent polar vortex, you may be worried about your plants. Let me give you a few guidelines about what you may expect to see next spring. Always note however these are guidelines and individual gardens will be different so you may find that one rule ...
• Bee Pollination in Tomatoes File this in the who would have thought it category. Researchers in Australia did a trial on greenhouse-grown tomato pollination using bees and using vibrating hand-wands. Both are routinely used in commercial greenhouses. We already know that wand-pollination reduces seed setting compared to the bees but now the researchers have shown that bee-pollinated tomatoes actually taste better ...
• Deer Repellent Trial Here’s a deer repellent trial we all want to know about. Researchers at Cornell U at Ithaca NY conducted field trials of deer repellants. It was a 10-week trial beginning in early Feb. The target shrub was Japanese yew, a plant favored by deer in this region. Plants were photographed and the images recorded and analyzed ...
• Bounce Fabric Softener Dryer Sheets and Fungus Gnats. This is no longer news as it was originally posted in 2011, but I thought I’d repost this as I rebuild the website. Here’s the deal. Raymond A. Cloyd (Kansas State University, Dept. of Entomology) and colleagues hung these dryer sheets around infected plants and found they did have repellant properties. Fungus gnats avoided the area. (I’m ...
• Do Modern Hybrid Vegetables Have Fewer Nutrients? Do Modern Hybrid Vegetables Have Fewer Nutrients?
• Herbicide Residues in Purchased Compost or Manure If you’re purchasing your compost or manures (or even topsoil) be aware that herbicide residues do exist and can create conditions that restrict the growth of plants. For example, aminopyralid is registered for a wide variety of crops and has created enough problems in the UK to have its registration pulled (technically Dow asked to have ...
• Have You Heard About This Easy Way To Make Cut Flowers Last Longer? If you take cut flowers into your house or if you recut purchased flowers (you should be recutting) before you arrange them, this tip is for you. Disinfect both your pruning shears and the vase with a 10% bleach solution. At the very least, disinfect the vase with a thorough washing. Research (reference below) indicated that Gerbera daisy ...
• Cancer rates increase on childhood exposure to ag-chemicals Need a reason to go organic if you have kids? James Brophy – the lead researcher on this study – of the University of Guelph, ON, Canada found that women growing up on farms were more likely to have cancer than other populations. Turns out the estrogen-mimicking chemicals now used in farming (and gardening) “have a ...
• High Nitrate Levels in Leafy Vegetables and Red LED lights High nitrate concentrations in vegetables (particularly if the vegetables are subject to low-light conditions, such as in winter greenhouses) pose possible human health risks and are therefore subject to regulatory limits in Europe. Researchers in Lithuania developed a way to reduce nitrates in leafy vegetables: short-term (three-day, round-the-clock) exposure immediately before harvest by narrow-bandwidth red light ...
• Japanese Beetles Hate Geraniums I’ve copied the original news release from the USDA here because I wanted to make sure you all saw it. Summary: Japanese beetles don’t like Pelargoniums (annual geraniums) and if they eat the leaves, they tend to pass out. There is no current spray-product that mimics this action in JB but you can reasonably expect to ...
• Review: Garant Dandelion Weed Tool I’ve been testing the Garant Dandelion Weed Tool this spring (2012) and unfortunately, I can’t recommend it to you. The video will show you the hassle this tool provides in finding the dandelions, getting them centered on the tool and then removing them from the tool. It takes forever to get a few simple dandelions! https://youtu.be/XegD9JRWfTQ My sense ...
• How To Assess The Value of Trees In Your Garden Here’s a nifty little calculator for finding the value of trees in your garden. As an example: arborists at the University of Massachusetts, the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation calculated the value of a pin oak with a 14-inch diameter at breast height. All numbers are annual savings/values. Carbon sequestered: ...
• How You Can Organize Your Garden With Free Evernote I was asked about record keeping for the garden. I’m a big fan of Evernote. It’s free. I use the $45/year pro level but I’m uploading a lot of info on a daily basis. You can upload pictures as well as notes and pdf files. So if you take a picture of your garden, you can attach that ...
• How You Can Talk To The Fireflies In Your Garden I’ve always appreciated the wry humour of Ogden Nash and he managed to capture my sense of natural history quite nicely with: “The firefly’s flame, Is something for which science has no name. I can think of nothing eerier, than flying around with an unidentified glow on a person’s posterior.”   We’ve got a bumper crop of these garden insects this ...
• A Modern Notion of Gardening As Magic A modern definition of magic is any technology sufficiently advanced it is not understood by a population. A classic example would be matches to cavemen or cell phones to the middle ages or even planetary creation to modern man. It’s magic. While this leads us down some interesting roads such as technology as magic or religion ...
• Felco Pruners Review When it comes to Felco hand pruners, there is simply no better choice to be made. Period. Yes, they’re a bit more expensive than other brands but they last for decades (I have the same pair I started out with in the nursery industry over 40 years ago) They’re a by-pass pruner and easier on the hands ...
• The Myths of Ground Covers The first thing you have to understand about ground covers is that they aren’t always what they’re advertised to be. Here’s what I mean. They Don’t Replace Grass This class of plants is touted as being a no-work replacement for grass. Well actually not. The actual research on growing these plants versus turf indicates that turf grass is less ...
• There Are Only Three Things You Need To Know and Do So you want a great garden and you really want to know what’s important. In a nutshell, there are three things that make and break your garden, lawn, container baskets, trees and shrubs and just about anything else you can dream of to grow or ask about. Here’s what you really need to know. Feed them Water Them. Get ...
• I Will Make These Garden Changes Next Year Every now and then it’s important to step back and evaluate what you’re doing in the garden. This is a report for 2017 looking forward into 2018 about some of the garden changes headed our way. Bidens ‘Campfire Fireburst’ and Salvia ‘Rockin Deep Purple’ (Proven Winners) as part of the ongoing plant trials – excellent plants ...
• Frugal Gardening Tips for Helping Others   So when it comes to free backyard landscaping ideas, I ‘m moved by this reader request: I love the pictures on this page… especially the top one. Looks like all the pics I see in all the gardening magazines I subscribe to. But it doesn’t help me at all, because the hardscaping alone is well above ...
• A Biodiversity Study You’ll Find Interesting   Folks – this is an older post that I just ran across and thought you might enjoy a reposting. I’ve just finished reading and absorbing one of the most fascinating research reports on a biodiversity study in recent memory. It has to do with biodiversity – how different species all manage (or not) to live together ...
• This Is The Best Plant Label Ever This is the best plant label ever! In fact, it’s so good my sweetie and I had a small conversation around it that went something like this. Head Gardener: “Nice label idea. Do we have enough corks to do your vegetable garden?” Vegetable Gardener: “Shut up and drink your wine.”   Best plant label ever!
• Six Issues in Successful Organic Container Gardening Organic container gardening is a natural offshoot of general organic gardening. Let’s take a look at how this system would work. The Container The first thing to deal with is the container. We’re looking for a natural container here – one made of wood, clay, pressed papers (although this last one could be debatable) I’m not overly interested in plastics and others ...
• What To Do With Leaves In The Fall Garden What To Do With Leaves In The Fall Garden Here’s how to deal with your fall leaves this year and don’t be blinded by what you did last year. Is it better to rake leaves or chop them up and so end them? Or is it better to end their stuggles and by so doing… (with apologies to the ...
• Why Easy Gardening Advice Is So Wrong Let me deal with the question first. Is gardening hard? Hell yeah. Having a great garden is serious physical work. The data below will give you some sense of this. Rough Equivalents of Different Forms of Exercise. Resting value of 0 Watering lawn or garden; standing or walking, sitting, knitting, sewing have a relative value of 1.5 over ...
• Raised Bed Garden Design for Movable Gardens Raised bed garden design starts with a simple garden bed. The picture below shows my latest garden bed at the beginning stages so you can see it all clearly. This kind of garden bed is ideal for renters or urban folk with lots of concrete and little actual soil for gardening. The raised bed is constructed of ...
• How To Rebuild Your Garden After A Massive Hailstorm Every now and then Mother Nature reaches out and lets us know that she’s still around. One of our premium members just got hit by a major hailstorm, and she sent some pictures asking what she could do or should must do in order to fix the plants and the garden for this year. My first ...
• Some Great Gardening Myths When it comes to great gardening myths – this is the collection area and I’ll add to them as they pop up on Facebook. Might be hard keeping up though… What about putting some extra chemical plant food in the hole when I plant? Don’t put fertilizer down the hole. End of discussion. Not good for the ...
• Spring Flower Pictures Spring flowers are one of the great delights in my garden. After a winter of white, seeing leaves and flowers emerge makes much of the work worthwhile. I also confess to enjoying spring far more now that I’m not working 18 hours days out in the nursery. One of the things that’s happening this year is ...
• Plant Review: Proven Winners Clethra ‘Vanilla Spice’ The summersweet shrub has long been one of my favorite shrubs and I’ve planted them in every garden I’ve had. This new variety from Proven Winners called ‘Vanilla Spice’ was planted in June 2010 in my gardens and I’ll be updating this note yearly as it grows into the flowering shrub I hope it becomes. Plant ...
• This Is One Ugly Garden: May 2017  In keeping with my history of showing you the good, the bad, and the just plain down right ugly, this is my garden in May 2017. It’s one ugly garden. We started the year We started the year by watching a few leaves of grass emerge from the their winter sleep. I looked out over the garden and ...
• Comparisons of Three Outdoor Lighting Systems When it comes to outdoor lighting, there are several options available to you. Here are a few pros and cons for each. We’ll compare solar lighting, low voltage (12-volt) lighting, and standard voltage (120v) for the advantages and disadvantages of each. Each system has advantages and disadvantages and many homeownere have unrealistic expectations of the different ...
• Why Your Garden Design Is Perfect For You Many beginner gardeners think there’s a magic way to landscape their property, a key to garden design success that, when learned, will give them an instantly magical garden. And they search for this silver bullet of garden success, getting more and more frustrated that their gardens don’t ever live up the the expectations created online and ...
• My Neighbor’s Vegetable Garden Is Better Than Mine. I got an interesting question the other day and it pretty much went like this. My next door neighbor’s garden is a better flower and vegetable garden than I have even though I feed and water well. I’ve asked her what she does and she says, “Nothing special” So what am I missing? The First ...
• The Dry Stone Wall Begins For 2017 It stopped raining here some time on Saturday night (April 8) so Sunday afternoon I  ventured out to do some gardening work. Did a bit of cleanup, put a few tools away in their proper home, found a things in the shed I’d forgotten about – you know the drill for the first time out ...
• The Garden in Early April 2017 I thought I might keep a running diary of this year’s garden. There are some rather large changes underway so this is an easy way to show you what’s happening and explain why I’m doing it all. Mayo and I have been rethinking what gardening means to us and what it means particularly when we’re involved ...
• The Eleven Organic Gardening Products You Really Need I get asked all the time, what organic gardening products do you really use in your garden and which are the most important? So – here are my choices for the organic supplies you should have in your garden shed to help you through the garden problem spaces. Organic Weed Control General weed control I usually buy my ...
• Four Easy Ways to Make Free Plant Tags It is really easy to make your own free plant tags for all your seeding and growing needs. This short video shows how to use a sharp pair of scissors, an old yogurt tub and a bit of time to save and recycle plastic while making sure you don’t forget which plant is which. I’ve used ...
• Book Review: Grow Figs I confess I’ve only eaten the figs in stores and never, ever a freshly-picked fig. And this, as it turns out is why I don’t really like this fruit according to Canadian garden author Steven Biggs. Who knew you could grow figs in Canada? Let me cut to the chase very quickly with my good news and ...
• My Favorite Garden Quotations Dear Friends – as you can see, this page of images/quotes was whacked in the move to a new server. Yes, all the images disappeared on every post of this site. I’ll be rebuilding them over the next while (there were a lot of them) 🙁 I have always loved quotations. Don’t ask me why. I ...
• Do You Know The Difference Between Annual and Perennial Flowers? Let’s look at the differences between annual and perennial flowers in the garden because there are some major differences you should be aware of. Longevity Annual plants are killed by frost or cold weather. They live for one growing season Perennial plants live through and over this cold weather – in very cold climates, the leaves die, the ...
• How To Protect and Increase Pollinators In Your Garden There’s an increasing focus on protecting those insects that pollinate our flowers and food crops.  While traditional “official” agriculture may not recognize any specific cause, they do know there’s an issue out there. On the home scale, extension services are developing resources for consumer download and here’s one from Michigan State University on “How To Protect ...
• I Get Paid To Kill Plants A friend and I walked through my backyard the other day and he was horrified to find a series of dead or dying plants in clay pots sitting there. “Why don’t you water them?” were the first words out of his mouth. I smiled. They did look pretty pathetic. And then I explained. “Anybody can grow ...
• Rain Chains in My Garden: A Review I saw one of these rain chains in a display garden a few years ago and fell in love with the concept. What’s not to like? Instead of a length of non-descript pipe, you get an interesting water feature during rain showers. These are copper chains and bells and while they start out looking bright and ...
• Eight Reasons You Should Spend More Time In The Garden Do you ever wonder why you garden or why it feels so good to garden? There’s increasing amounts of research that proves that gardening is both physically and psychologically good for you. Gardening vs Exercise in Weight Loss For example, I’m not a great fan of useless aerobic exercise for exercise’ sake and that is putting it mildly. Gardeners ...
• Green Stalk Garden: A Container Planter Review Green Stalk is one of the new space-saving stackable gardening systems to enter the market.  I’ve tested several similar systems and when the box arrived I wasn’t all that optimistic given the experiences I’ve had. You see, most of these stackable systems have a watering problem. They don’t get water to the bottom levels and it’s ...
• New Generation of LED Lights For Indoor Gardening I’m starting to track the development of LED lights for indoor growing.  Mainly because I’m getting tired of replacing the grow lights in our system every year or so and not having enough light to properly grow seedlings even with those lights.  (I think we need three bulbs and not the two in the system). Here’s ...
• It Turns Out I Can’t Do It All One of the things I’m struggling with at the moment is the realization that I can’t do it all. I remember a good friend’s father at 92 saying he was annoyed because he couldn’t do at 92 what he used to do at 65. And I’m sure I’m not alone when I say at 65, ...
• Starting An Indoor Farm This one is a bit of a stretch in that it’s really about starting a serious indoor farm.  You could modify it for your basement if you wanted to and that’s why I included it.  Even at a basement scale, you’re going to produce a ton of food (but you have to be able to ...
• The Gardening Question I Never Answer Let me tell you a short story from my nursery days. A customer came into the nursery and she was really, really upset because the tomato plants she purchased from me weren’t growing. It was a month after planting and they were still the same height and size. She wasn’t happy and made that clear. “Why aren’t my ...
• (Premium) Neonics May Or May Not Be Hurting Bees Folks, here’s a link to two very interesting study on Neonics and bees. They should be required reading to understand how bias on both side of the organic-chemical divide/debate come into play. Note that I’m not a fan of chemicals in the garden but I don’t appreciate flawed research on either side as it’s not ...
• A Practical Review of the Rainforest Sprinkler Head Last summer, the folks at Rainforest Sprinklers sent me a sprinkler to test and try out. So I dutifully hooked this slightly familiar looking unit up to my watering system and turned it on. What I remembered as soon as it start working was that this was almost the exact same shape and operation of sprinkler ...
• (Premium) Tiny Wasp Battles Emerald Ash Borer It appears there’s a predator for the Emerald Ash Borer and while it’s not commercially available yet – you should keep your eyes out for this one (I sure will) Here’s the bottom line on what this tiny wasp does. A recent 7-year field study conducted by scientists from the Agricultural Research Service (Jian Duan), the Forest ...
• Five Important Guidelines for Pruning Bushes Pruning bushes is like many other gardening skills, you get to learn the basic cuts and then you apply them. The first step is to understand the two basic cuts and what they do for and to your plant. Once you understand these, then you can prune darn near anything in your shrub garden by following a ...
• Cinnamon Fungus May Fight Other Fungal Problems This is one of those “hmmm” kinds of research articles. I’m seeing more and more of this kind of stuff coming out of the cinnamon tree (leaves and bark) which of course leads me to wonder about other things. The Muscodor albus fungus is a naturally occurring cinnamon fungus on cinnamon trees and fumes from it ...
• Butterflies, Native Habitat Information and More One of the mixed blessings about our island is the constant breeze we have. To be sure, it blows mosquitoes over to the mainland but it also blows butterflies out over the 2-mile wide channel as well. I’ve often had them land on the sailboat when we’re offshore on a sunny/windy day. I’d love to ...
• Why Do Weeds Grow Faster Than Flowers? A while ago, I asked my newsletter readers why my weeds grew faster than my garden plants while I was away. I left home to a perfectly tame back yard and came home to blooming chicory all through it. They responded below…. My Readers Wrote Heah, Isn’t chicory that stuff really “healthy” people drink instead of coffee????????? The answer to ...
• Potential Winter Plant Damage In Your Garden An almost universal concern is around potential winter plant damage in this winter weather we’re experiencing. There Are Two Kinds Of Winter Plant Damage Really cold. Really warm. And each has its unique set of problems. Really Cold The basic answer is that unless the plant has started growing – the buds swelling for spring – there is little chance of ...
• Garden Resolutions 2016 One of the things science has shown us is that making resolutions in early January is almost a waste of time. And that includes gardening resolutions I’m afraid. Gym memberships explode the first week of January and by the end of February, they’re empty again. Weight loss programs fill up and the same effect happens. It seems ...
• Pollinator Research Guide From Kerr Institute Folks, you know how important pollinators are for our wild areas and indeed our ornamental gardens. And if you’ve been following any of the news stories, you understand how we can all work together to help. The Kerr Center has been working and publishing information about this (and a wide variety of activities) for some time ...
• Garden review Troy Bilt String Trimmer 590EC In reviewing this Troy bilt string trimmer 590EC (whipper snipper) I would like to make several things clear up front. The first is that MTD (the owner of Troy bilt) sent me this machine for review and it included the basic whipper-snipper and brush blade. I bought the tiller and edger attachments. The second is that ...
• The Toronto Gardeners Journal and Sourcebook If you don’t have a copy of this journal, you’re missing out on a great notebook crammed with Canadian resources for all things gardening plus a daily journal for your garden with hints and gardening tips for every week of the year The resource section – where to find interesting plants, supplies, magazines etc. My personal ...
• Reviews of the AAS Winner Tomato ‘Jasper’ The tomato ‘Jasper’ is an AAS winner for 2013 and is being touted as a very sweet cherry tomato producing hundreds of 3/4 inch fruit on each plant. It is an indeterminate plant with the vine reaching up to 7-feet tall in a single season so this is best growing as a staked plant. It is an ...
• Review: Proven Winners Supertunia Flamingo This is another of the Proven Winners Supertunia series, called  Supertunia Flamingo. This is a prolific flowering plant in a “flamingo pink” shade of salmon-pink. Like all the other fast-growing but smaller growing Petunias, I’m looking forward to a summer of heavy blooming. Note to readers: This plant was sent to me by Proven Winners to test ...
• Plant Review: Proven Winners Spirea ‘Double Play Big Bang’ Spirea Double Play Big Bang is one of the more heavily planted of flowering shrubs because of its hardiness, heavy flowering and leaf coloration. In short, this plant has it all when it comes to talking about shrubs. Here are the details you need to know about this plant. Growing Details Sunlight: sun to part shade Hardiness: USDA ...
• Review: Soilwrap Plantable Pots The news release for the SoilWrap Plantable Pot says: There are no pots to dispose of, no root damage during transplanting, and SoilWrap® biodegrades in the garden in just one season…. The bottomless design encourages fast rooting with no transplant shock. It also ...
• Review: Proven Winners Supertunia Double Dark Blue This is one of the new breeding of Petunia, ones that grow like stink and do not require constant deadheading. I’ve grown these in the past but never reviewed them so it’s about time I got some thoughts down to share. Note to readers: I purchased this plant at a local garden center for review purposes. ...
• Book Review: Protect Your Garden: Eco-friendly Solutions for Healthy Plants I’ve just finished reading Ed Rosenthal’s latest book called, “Protect Your Garden” and it’s something that’s easily recommended for beginner to intermediate gardeners. Seriously, this is a book I’d think of keeping on my bookshelf or give to one of my kids rather than give it away to some fundraising book sale. It’s that useful. Note to ...
• Using Palmolive Detergent For Powdery MIldew Control Here’s a tip you might find interesting. Researchers in Canada have discovered that household Palmolive detergent both prevents and fights powdery mildew symptoms on fruit. It was as good as the registered chemical product for commercial control with one important exception. It caused fruit damage at the rates tested (russeting on apples and grapes, premature dropping ...
• Practical Garden Tool Review of A Poulan Chainsaw I have to start this Poulan chainsaw review by saying this has been a serious learning curve for me with chainsaws. You see, I had an old Pioneer Farmsaw for years and years but the engine finally blew out. This was a farm-level semi-commercial saw and I cleared several old Elm swamps with it and ...
• Plantskydd Deer Repellent Review There are several ways I could have written this Plantskydd deer repellent review but I decided, in the end, that brutal honesty was the best course of action here. Sigh… So I heard about Plantskydd from fellow garden writer Dan Clost who sang its praises at the nursery he works in. He claimed it protected the ...
• Review: Pearlbush Snow Day Surprise Pearlbush is one of those shrubs few people know about except for a brief moment in late spring or early summer when it springs into glorious bloom. And for that moment, it will win your gardening heart before it fades back to green background foliage. Plant Details Sunlight: full sun to part shade Hardiness: USDA zones 4-8 Growth rate: Medium Height: ...
• Mighty-Mato Tomatoes I’m not sure where to start with this kind of plant so let me simply give you the data I have. First – a rather large plant company sent me 3 plants to trial so I did not purchase these plants. Second – these are grafted tomato plants. A tomato of one kind (I have not been ...
• Plant Review: Marigold Bonanza Deep Orange Over the past 30 years, I’ve grown just about every Marigold on the market, either for my nursery or for my own pleasure. From the really tall to the really short and just about everything in between. This particular Marigold came onto my trials this spring (2013) and I wasn’t overly impressed thinking “just another fancy ...
• Review of Proven Winners Lilac Bloomerang I found Lilac ‘Bloomerang Purple’ on sale in mid-summer so just “had” to bring the poor orphan home to install in a bright sunny part of the front garden. The soil there is reasonable but slightly shallow (means I do provide some summer irrigation) but the plant is also mulched heavily. Lilac ‘Bloomerang’ Image from Proven ...
• Garden Tool Review: Honda Rototiller This review is based on several rentals of the 8hp Honda rototiller with rear tines. I typically tend to work machines fairly hard on rental days (as do many folks) although I do not abuse them by trying to run them through rock fields. Here’s what I think about this machine. power The 8hp engine is set ...
• Proven Winners: Heliotrope ‘Simply Scentsational’ Review I’ve grown regular Heliotrope before but not this particular hybrid so I’m looking forward to the growth rates and growth habits. Note to readers. This is a plant I purchased from a local garden center for trial purposes. How To Grow Sunshine: This is a full sun plant Height: 24-30 inches tall Hardiness: It’s an annual unless you pack ...
• Proven Winners Gaura ‘Karalee Petite Pink’ Review Gaura has always been a favorite perennial flower of mine and even though it’s a bit tender in our clay soils, it can give a wonderful season-long show of blooms when it does survive. I was pleased to see this variety pop up on the annuals bench – a Proven Winners variety called Gaura ‘Karalee Petite ...
• Review Proven Winners Forsythia ‘Show Off’ Like all forsythia, this is a charming early spring bloomer – in a bright yellow blossom. I hope you know forsythia is one of the useful garden shrubs for gardener as it not only is one of the first to bloom but is also a “marker” shrub for spreading corn gluten on lawns to stop ...
• Garden Tool Review: Fiskars Hand Pruners In reviewing these Fiskars hand pruners, I confess a bit of a bias towards my old set of Felco pruners that I’ve carried professionally for 30 years and I’ll review those separately. I note these tools were supplied by Fiskars for review. I have three different sizes of these pruners and each has its own merits and ...
• Book Review: Fairy Gardens I first got the book “Fairy Gardens” by Betty Earl last year and I’ve put off writing about it while I thought about the entire concept. It really came to the fore when I showed my Facebook readers a big broken clay pot I had ruined and multiple suggestions about creating a fairy garden came ...
• Should You Grow Zinnia ‘Profusion Double Hot Cherry’? Zinnia are one of the old-fashioned flowers that make excellent cut flowers and have always had a place in my gardens. While I tend to grow many of the older open-pollinated varieties, the new hybrids have some very special qualities. This plant won an award for being a good bloomer in all parts of North America ...
• Weedlance Tool Review Every now and then I’ll be approached by a gardener or entrepreneur with a dream of creating the next best thing in garden tools. And I’m asked to try and review them. I usually put the tool in the shed and when the right moment comes along, I’ll give it a try. The Weedlance was such ...
• Garden Tool Review: Winged Weeder Dutch Hoe The Winged Weeder weeding tool is a great example of a Dutch hoe and I’ve had one of these for many years now. It’s shaped like the swept back wings of a jet – (and you can buy your own by clicking on that link) but the advantage of this tool is that it’s light, it’s ...
• I Really Love Those Gardeners I love those people, really I do. And I always have. When I had my greenhouse/nursery business rather than writing I even used to grow a special crop just for them. Really! Why wouldn’t I? They were the lifeblood of my business so I had to treat them well. The rest of you were super to ...
• Tomato Chooser App Review Mother Earth News has just released this app called Tomato Chooser and it’s an interesting one this time of year as you start browsing through the seed catalogues. The app has several different sections but the heart of it contains 333 tomato varieties that are all simply described for the main characteristics A separate section called Guides ...
• The Small Gardens of Savannah The gardens of Savannah Georgia in the Southern US are some of the loveliest small gardens in the country. Many are as old as the houses they shelter behind and almost all are in the shade of the giant live oak trees that cloak the city. Savannah is horticulturally classed as a USDA zone 8 garden ...
• How To Pick Hand Pruning Shears That Will Work For You I’ve used two brands of pruning shears in my professional horticultural work. While I’ll review them below – there are several things you want to think about when buying this tool. Anvil versus Bypass. A bypass blade works like a pair of scissors – the blades pass each other to do the cutting. Anvil cutting drives the ...
• Practical Pruning Advice This page is intended to both demonstrate practical pruning advice and to show you that it’s not an arcane science. The first thing to understand Plants are pretty resilient. It’s harder than you think to really screw them up so a mistake or two here and there isn’t the end of the world and it likely won’t ...
• The Most Important Decision Before Using Pole Pruners Pole pruners are pretty much what they sound like – a pruning system on top of a pole. The trick is in knowing what you need and how you’re going to use this specialized tool.  Mind you, using this follows all the guidelines for proper pruning found on this page. Personal Warning The first and most obvious ...
• Review Timber Press Guide to Succulents of the World There a few things as beautiful to a serious gardener as a good book written by an acknowledged expert in his field. And this is where Timber Press does such an outstanding job of getting this material into print with Fred Dotort’s “Timber Press Guide to Succulents of the World”. If it sounds as if I ...
• There Are Only Two Essential Gardening Books My garden book collection is by almost any standards a good one. I don’t have an exact count but it’s over 1000 books just on gardening because we’re talking over 20 years of serious book collecting. And I’m not talking the modern stuff – I rarely collect and keep books published after 1950, preferring mostly ...
• Book Review: Decoding Garden Advice I confess I had high expectations for “Decoding Garden Advice” having read glowing reviews across the Net but confess I was left with mixed emotions after having read it myself. First let me say that Dr. Jeff Gilman is a respected plantsman and researcher in the trade and certainly knows his woody plants cold. He may ...
• Deer Repellent Review: Liquid Fence When it comes to deer repellents, the amount of really bad information on the Net is staggering, simply staggering. Deer are creatures of habit; if they get used to eating and travelling on one route, that’s the preferred route and material they’ll eat along the way. So what is a plant they’ll eat in one location ...
• Plant Review Proven Winners Chrysocephalum ‘Flambe Yellow’ Chrysocephalum apiculatum ‘Flambe Yellow’ is a specialized plant for the hot, sunny garden that gets very little water. It’s a survivor. Which is probably a good thing in Southern gardens out in the full heat.] Disclaimer: I purchased this plant this spring for my own garden plant trials Quick Growing Details Height 8-12″ inches mounding Plant apart: 12-14 inches Sun: Full ...
• Why I Don’t Use A Cobra Head Weeder This cobra head weeder review is based on my own gardening experiences and opinions and may vary from yours. It is also based on over 30 years of practical gardening experience. (that’s what you call a disclaimer) 🙂 This tool is advertised as being useful for planting, cultivating, weeding etc. In short a general purpose cultivation ...
• A Bog Boot Review That Surprised Me I have to admit when the p.r. rep emailed me asking if I wanted to review a pair of Bog Boots I was skeptical. Well, not just skeptical but amusedly so. I mean these are the kinds of things you read on other blogs, not a nursery-guys blog. But, never having been a fashion maven, I ...
• Building Soils Naturally – Book Review There are several kinds of gardeners – 1) those who don’t really want to be bothered learning much and just want to plunk a plant in the ground, 2) those who want to learn how to garden but aren’t constant tinkerers and the last, 3) those who want to learn about gardening and can’t leave anything alone long ...
• Don’t Make This Mistake Buying Garden Plants This Spring The other day I was out scouting the local plant stores and wound up at a pop-up greenhouse at a local Loblaws store (for my U.S. readers, this is a major food chain in Canada). I saw an upright wooden shelf system containing native plants and was delighted to see several varieties of trillium. Without ...
• Mount Cuba Plant Research Reports I took this directly from the Mount Cuba website. Mt. Cuba Center’s Trial Garden evaluates native plants and their related cultivars for their horticultural and ecological value. The goal of this research is to provide gardeners and the horticulture industry with information about superior plants for the mid-Atlantic region as well as highlight the important ecosystem ...
• Southern Annual Flower Test Garden Reviews Costa Farms is one of the “big boys” when it comes to Southern annual production. Their massive greenhouse operations are scattered across Florida but their trial gardens are in Miami. This link will take you to an online magazine that lists/shows you pictures of their plant trials and plant profiles. If you’re concerned with high heat ...
• 2015 AAS Display Garden Landscape Design Contest Winners OK – if you’re interested in seeing a ton of annual flower pictures, this is your post. 🙂 These are the winners in the AAS (All America Selections) trial gardens (the best trial gardens) Scroll down and click on each garden’s link to see what they’ve done with annuals. Click here to overdose on annual flower gardens ...
• Production of Baby-leaf Salad Greens AbstractBaby-leaf salad green crops such as lettuce (Lactuca sativa), kale (Brassica oleracea), arugula (Eruca sativa), and mustard greens (Brassica juncea) thrive in the cool, humid climate of the maritime Pacific Northwest, particularly in the extended spring and fall seasons. To identify cultivars best suited for extended-season production in northwest Washington, nine leafy green cultivars were grown ...
• Tomatoes Grown with LED or High-pressure Sodium Supplemental Lights Bottom line: it doesn’t matter whether you use LED or Sodium Lights to grow tomatoes indoors or in greenhouses. The taste doesn’t change. Abstract Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are an attractive alternative to high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps for plant growth because of their energy-saving potential. However, the effects of supplementing broad-waveband solar light with narrow-waveband LED light on the ...
• New Colors For 2016 From Landscape Insider Magazine: “According to the latest research from Trends magazine, as well as Esse Tarrolly’s “2016 Outdoor Furniture Trends” report, navy is the new outdoors neutral. It is always crisp. Navy marries nicely with an array of colors, and it can be particularly fresh with coral, aqua, gray or cream. Add a touch of ...
• 21 New Potted Plants For 2016 If you’re interested in new potted plants, this is what’s coming at you in the next year. There is a slideshow at the link below. Note I don’t grow potted plants and that’s why I don’t answer questions about houseplants. (sorry). http://www.greenhousegrower.com/varieties/21-new-blooming-potted-plants-for-trouble-free-greenhouse-production/ 1. Asiatic Lily Overjoyed Series Mixes (Flamingo Holland) Combining your Asiatic Lilies has never been easier ...
• Recipe for Flavorful Tomatoes: Heat Before Chilling You may have seen this story before – I wrote about it in my newsletter. But I decided to hunt down the actual USDA research (should have done this before writing – my bad) and share it with you. Note the last paragraph! In other words, this is a commercial practice using green tomatoes (at least ...
• Germinating Flowering Dogwood Cornus florida seeds show strong dormancy. In this study, we investigated the causes of the dormancy by assessing the permeability of the stony endocarp, the germination of seeds after mechanical dissection, and the effect of endogenous inhibitors. Water uptake by intact and cracked seeds during imbibition showed that the endocarp formed a strong barrier for water ...
• Ornamental Groundcover Characteristics of Rhizoma Peanut Rhizoma peanut has the potential for use as an ecologically friendly groundcover or turf alternative. Little is known about height and cover characteristics of this plant, which are important ornamental considerations. The objectives of this field study were to characterize maximum average canopy height, height variability, the time to reach full canopy cover, and the ...
• I’m a Fan of Timber Press Books So here I am, sitting staring at over 600 pages on my old site and many of them are perennials. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been growing these plants on a commercial and collector level for somewhere around 30, er 35, well then, 40 years now and have managed to grow and/or kill more ...
• Birch and Walnut Trees Make “Maple” Syrup Too Researchers at Cornell University point out that both Walnut and Birch trees can produce a syrup similar to maple syrup. The taste is described as, “intense fruity molasses flavor” so maple syrup on pancakes is probably not in danger of disappearing. The good news is that the sap from these trees starts flowing when the sap ...
• The Value of Trees This is pretty cool stuff when it comes to figuring out the value of trees in the environment (particularly in your neighborhood) Pittsburgh did a study through Tree Pittsburgh to find out how much value the trees were adding to the city in terms of air They only sampled small plots of city-owned trees (not those ...
• Seven Things You Can Easily Do To Save Honeybees If you’ve been following the news, you know that industrial agricultural practices are killing bees with the reliance on chemicals that confuse them and worse. Here are seven simple things you can do in your own backyard to help honeybees in your area. The article is at the Rodale site
• Shading Vegetables in High Heat Areas The summer of 2012 was a very high heat one across the bulk of North America and gardeners had lowered harvests as a result of this. In our own shallow soil garden, yields were well below my expectations largely because of excessive soil heating and high leaf temperatures. This study caught my attention this week ...
• HoneyBee Decline and Nionicotinoid Insecticides It’s a very long and very technical report on honeybee decline but you can read it at the news release section of January 16, 2013, from the EFSA web site EFSA = European Food Safety Association. Their general bee info is here Today, the CFS called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ...
• Use Pyramid Lures for Stink Bugs In recent research, the USDA folks found, “that significantly more stink bug adults and juvenile bugs, called nymphs, were captured in the baited black pyramid traps than in other traps. The researchers also found that more adults and nymphs were captured in a trap placed on the ground than in a commercially available trap hung ...
• Biochar Research Resource A few of you have indicated you’re interested in Biochar and here’s the mother lode of Biochar research.
• New USDA Zone Map Available The new USDA map for gardeners can be found here Remember that gardening zones are usually only guidelines and not carved in stone standards. Microzones will play a large part in your garden’s cold or heat values.
• Biochar and Glacial Soils USDA scientists have shown that adding biochar to glacial soil can reduce the emission of CO2 from those soils (binding excess CO2) but note you have to add something in the order of 20% biochar in the soil mass. And when you did this, not only did CO2 levels get bound up in ...
• Plants Defend Themselves Against Fungus Problems For a very long time now, organic gardeners have believed that plants have self-defense mechanisms that work against insects and diseases. A plant is attacked and it defends itself by releasing hormones or biochemicals. This has been confirmed in multiple experiments now with regard to insects and now, thanks to the USDA, research on ...
• Next Year’s Color – 2013 OK – so if you’ve been waiting with bated breath to hear what next year’s fashion color is – it’s Tangerine Orange. So yes, you’re going to see a ton of things come at you in bright orange next year. Here’s the pantone page with some fashion drawings on it. And ...
• New Apple Growing Resource Here’s an interesting resource on apple growing. Pulling from extension folks, it aims to give you all the latest and best news on apple cultivation. This may be overkill for home gardeners but I pass it along because some of you are fruit-crazy gardeners. 🙂 Click here to see this resource
• Biochar research on soil moisture and fertility This biochar research is interesting Soil scientist Jeff Novak at the ARS Coastal Plains Soil, Water and Plant Research Center in Florence, S.C. is the lead researcher to evaluate the effects of biochar on soil moisture and fertility. There are multiple locations across the US involved in this. Several different kinds of organic matter – ranging ...
• Biochar and Asparagus decline I’ve said I’d pass along anything I found on biochar – that current darling of the experimental gardening crowd – but one in which the real research has been somewhat lacking. Here’s a recent study from Dept. of Plant Pathology and Ecology, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, showing that adding biochar to soils where asparagus ...
• Indoor Food Production I really like this artistic growing system made of 2-liter bottles and recycling etc. I may have to get me one of these. 🙂 The “how-to” pages so you can make your own are here. p.s. this is a do-it-yourself project!
• Herbarium Plant Pictures There are more than seven million specimens in the Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden (Bronx, NY 10458). Thousands of digitized images of specimens can be viewed here . Check out the invasive plant species if you’re interested in such things. The Smithsonian also has a library of digitalized pics right here
• Eat Your Leafy Greens! If you want to eat your leafy greens but you’re bored with what’s in the grocery store, this site is for you. This lists a ton of articles and some free downloads about leafy green plants you can grow and eat.
• A Gardener’s Weather Site If you’re really interested in the weather as it impacts your garden, you may want to check out this website. It collects information from gardeners across the US (sorry, not Canada) and presents it in interesting ways.
• Top Selling Wetland Plants Not that you want to start selling wetland plants but if you have a bog or pond, these are the top selling (most popular) wetland plants. I’ve grown most of them at one time or other (some are an “acquired” taste in horticulture) 🙂 But for the most part, start with these and ...
• Gypsy Moth Information – Everything You Need To Know I don’t know if you’ve ever had a serious Gypsy Moth outbreak but I remember when they invaded the bush behind us. We had a “hot spot” and they darn near defoliated the entire bush until the spray planes hit them with Bt. You can argue about the use of this bacteria or ...
• Strawberry Wins Flower Award! An edible but heavy flowering strawberry was chosen as this year’s FleuroStar winner by the international annual flower award organization, Fleuroselect. Fragaria x ananassa Toscana, a bedding plant strawberry bred by ABZ Seeds, was this year’s top pick of the six entries considered for the award. The berry plant has dark-pink blossoms and beautiful cone-shaped ...
• Plant Growth Is Stimulated by Tea-seed Extract: Tea-seed extract is produced from saponin-rich by-products of camellia oil production. You can often find this material in health food stores or other specialty online-retailers. Various concentrations were created and tested on different grass and vegetable crops. Applications were either by spraying plants 1.5 tsp /M2 (1.5 tsp per square metre of ground) or ...
• Golden Rain Tree – Tree of the Year The Society of Municipal Arborists named Koelreuteria paniculata the 2011 Urban Tree of the Year. In warmer areas than mine, this is a pest resistant, ornamental with gorgeous yellow flowers. It also does not become invasive even given the huge number of blooms/seeds. It’s a late June bloomer – later than most other flowering ...
• Fungus Gnat Larvae Damage One of the things many folks don’t understand is that if they see small fungus gnats flying around their plants, these insects do have larval forms (really, really small worms) that can burrow into the roots and below-ground stems (in cuttings) of plants. To make matters worse, it turns out these small larvae also carry ...
• Mites and Cool Spring Weather The almost invisible cyclamen mite is a common pest on greenhouse plants when it’s been a cool spring so you may be seeing a few problems that you can’t identify until the weather warms up considerably. These mites hide in darker, damper areas of the plant (leaf axils etc) They actually inject a toxin into ...
• US EPA Released Data on Pesticide Use The Environmental Protection Agency released a report containing the latest estimates of agricultural and nonagricultural pesticide use in the United States. (Data is from 1998-2007.) * Eighty percent of all U.S. pesticide use was in agriculture. * Herbicides remained the most widely used type of pesticide in the agricultural market sector. * Some top 10 pesticides used in ...
• Powdery Mildew on Petunia One of the by-products of having great new petunias is that some of them are produced vegetatively (from cuttings) rather than seed. If you’re buying some of the fancier, new plants – one plant to a pot with promises of massive growth – the odds are you’re getting a vegetative plant and not a seed-grown ...
• Update on Botrytis Botrytis This fungus is the major fungal problem in our gardening world. It is the grey mouldy stuff that appears on spent blossoms and attacks wounded leaves. Think of it as Mother Nature’s shock troops – when there’s something that’s ready for composting, botrytis is sent in to start the job. When it’s done, other ...
• UV Lighting for Powdery Mildew Control Now here’s something you might be able to use in your propagation area when you start taking shrub cuttings this season. DLV Plant in Wageningen, Netherlands has done some commercial sized research using UV lights on plant cuttings. A UV light is simply a “black light”. They exposed plants three times a week to 75 watt ...
• Garden Organic Website Resource I’m not sure how many of you have seen this website It is the oldest organic gardening organization in the U.K. (Used to be the Henry Doubleday Research Association) Fifty years old now. They have a ton of resources and a free 3-month membership trial period. One of the freebies ...
• Bee Resource If you’ve been concerned about the declining bee population (whether the cause is disease, environmental chemicals or whatever) then this is your website. But NOT for information on what’s causing the problem but rather for things you can do right now to help native bees survive in your region by planting appropriate plants. There’s way too ...
• Reducing Sunburn in Fruit Not many gardeners understand the issue of reducing sunburn in fruit. There is a huge economic impact of too much sunshine on fruiting plants and indeed, in the home garden this is a problem not many gardeners are aware of. When the sunshine hits the fruit (let’s say apple) skin, that skin warms up. ...
• Blight Resistant Tomato The University of North Carolina recently released ‘Mountain Merit’, a blight resistant tomato, a determinate large-fruited F1 hybrid that shows resistance to late blight. According to the article, it is also resistant to fusarium wilt, verticillium wilt, root-knot nematodes, and tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV). Almost any and all major diseases. Note this is “resistant” ...
• A Comparison of Conventional and Granular Manure This trial compared heat-treated granular manure fertilizer (pelleted manure is heated in the process of forming pellets) with conventional inorganic fertilizer. In head to head comparisons, spinach was the same for both fertilizers but conventional fertilizers outperformed the organic with lettuce and broccoli. The short time between planting and harvesting worked for the spinach but the longer ...
• Possible Gerbera for Outdoors There’s a new variety/marketing series of Gerbera daisy that is being touted as perennial in a USDA zone 7. Now that won’t mean much to most of us but the really interesting part of this is that it is also being promoted as heat and humidity resistant in these areas. Now that means that ...
• Ilex glabra (inkberry) Ilex glabra (common name Inkberry) is one of those shrubs I just loved to grow on my old nursery and have regretted not having in my current garden. It’s a native shrub hardy to USDA zone 5-ish and you really need a damp soil to grow it properly. In our area, the native plants grew right ...