Down the Garden Path 2017

Now that nearly every shade tree and ornamental are in full leaf, gardeners have been spotting some "spots" out there. Those spots can range in color from light green on a very green leaf (oak leaf blister) to black dots coming together to give a much larger blotch of black (tar leaf spot on maples...

Over the past weekend, the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA) posted a news release with changes for this summer on their tactics for managing Gypsy Moths in parts of Kane, Kendall, Will and LaSalle counties. In past years, the public's involvement has been passive in the sense that IDOA...

Welcome to another year of gardening! You would think January would be a time for gardeners and homeowners to sit back a bit, yet questions keep rolling in to Master Gardeners and Extension Educators. Let's check out a few of them: Q: With bitter cold weather, is there anything I...

Vegetable crops are mostly doing what they should be doing right now, given our sporadic plantings working around the weather. U of I Extension Master Gardeners have mainly been getting tree, shrub, evergreen and flower questions, and are not hearing about problems in the vegetable garden. Leafy...

The end of November can still mean there are projects outside that need to be done. Tree leaves have been slow to fall, so maybe use the mower and bagger attachment to go over the lawn one more time to clean up the last of the leaves. Ground up leaves can be used to cover the vegetable garden soil...

Horticulture Educator Rhonda Ferree recently wrote an article on our over-the-top spring rains and the waterlogged soils that resulted. Her comments apply statewide and I wanted to share some that article this week. "It's no secret that much of Illinois has received excessive spring rains, which...

That perennial question of "How soon can I plant my garden?" likely has been around since the first garden was planted. Part of the answer stems from knowing what kind of vegetables you are going to sow from seed or put in the garden as transplants. There are things you may need to know before you...

Now is the time to spend some time with your fruit trees before the season shuts us out. A few actions now can help prevent problems later. Rodent damage to the trunk at the soil line happens when grass grows tall next to the trunk. Remove the grass and weeds using hand clippers, not the string...

Boy, there has certainly been a lot of news coverage this past week or two about our higher than usual and even record-setting temperatures. Just about every arboretum and botanic garden, and even Extension, has been called on for interviews. No one's gardening crystal ball has been very clear,...

Birdseed and firewood are two common topics that come up this time of year. Both take some planning to be successful. Feeding the birds means starting earlier than later. Birds need to know early on that there will be something to eat on a regular basis if you want them to hang around in your yard...

Late last week, several weather-related organizations put out a release entitled "Major Cold and Wet Spring Event: Potential Impacts in the North Central U.S. April 26 –May 9, 2017." The story comes from the National Weather Service in partnership with NOAA, USDA Midwest Climate Hub, USDA...