Over the Garden Fence 2016

Gardeners whisper about it hoping there is some truth to what your parents told you about when to plant your vegetables. Others will devise their own way to determine when it is safe to plant in their yards. In other cases the gardener will join the gardener's anonymous club, being a real gambler...

It is way too early to be doing anything outside to brighten our view from inside, yet you can bring some of that spring color indoors by forcing blooms on a number of flowering shrubs and ornamental trees in your home landscape. Early spring flowering shrubs produce their flower buds the summer...

Questions coming in over the phone, via email and with residents visiting the Master Gardener Help Desks is really an easy way to see any developing trends in the home landscape. Some weeks' it is all about insects, other weeks' plant diseases. Here are few from the past few days. Can I...

We have been enjoying mild late fall temperatures and our plants have been slow to respond to the normal signals to go dormant. Trees and shrubs finally received the message, yet our lawns remain pretty green and maybe even needed one more mowing before the big snow. There are some landscape...

About this time of year gardeners are wondering why some of the flower beds are looking good and others never seemed to really take off and fill in. Garden soils can make such a difference in how quickly flowers will cover the bed. With all the rain we had earlier, poor drainage is often at the "...

In the past couple of weeks some of our large shade trees have signs of chlorosis showing up. The leaves are not the medium and deep green they are normally and can have darker veins that fade out into the surrounding leaf tissue. Chlorosis is most of often caused by a nutrient deficiency, not...

This spring has seemingly brought out the worst in some of our lawn weeds. Creeping Charlie, also called Ground Ivy has been the number one complaint I have had this spring while talking lawn care with homeowners and garden club members. Creeping Charlie quietly grew well into the fall of 2015...

Just about now, you can see holiday trees sitting in the front or side yard, waiting for the assigned pick up date to be collected and mulched. This is one way to be sure your holiday tree gets recycled to the benefit of the environment. The follow through to getting your tree composted in a...