Plants in the garden (and insects too) develop based on something called "Growing Degree Days" or GDD for short. This is an accumulation of heat units using a base of 50 degrees. For every degree above fifty goes towards the growing degree-days and plant development. Most of us do not follow GDD,...
In China it is the year of the snake, but here in the Midwest most gardeners will agree it seems to be the year of the weed. Weeds are everywhere and are not even slowing down as summer moves along. Master Gardeners have been very busy with clientele bringing anything from a single weed to an...
Storm damage can now be added to our list of what has happened to our landscape plants. The drought of 2012 started things off creating lots of stressed trees, shrubs and evergreens. Recently planted and very mature plants were affected as well as everything in between. Jump ahead to the winter of...
Our summer season has moved along enough that the some of the flowers in the garden have finished their bloom show and now are in need of bit of help. Deadheading is simple enough, you just remove the old spent blossoms. For flowers with individual blooms, removing those spent flowers will...
There has been some recent press covering cicadas in Illinois this summer. While we can have a few cicadas every year, the brood of concern will be invading northwestern Illinois in the summer of 2014. According to the experts that follow cicadas, this is known as the Iowa brood (also called the...
Just about this time every year, homeowners that have a Sycamore tree in the home landscape begin to notice problems. Leafing out late or seeing a second set of buds and then leaves form is not normal. While Sycamores seem to be the worst, the disease called anthracnose also infects other trees as...
Our beautiful ornamental flowering crabapples that grace so many yards have a couple of foliage diseases that can really impact how our flowering crabapples look once the bloom show is gone. Both diseases readily infect the crabapple leaf. Apple Scab (crabapple scab) will really detract from...
Spring is a good time to be planting trees, shrubs and evergreens in the home landscape. We have lost so many trees to the Emerald Ash borer, other wood boring insects and diseases lately that some communities look bare, especially when all the street and parkway trees were ash. Since the drought...
This column has talked about the many impacts of our 2012 drought and why our trees, shrubs and evergreens have had such a struggle regaining their health and returning to a good annual rate of growth over the past 2 years. Lawns were clearly a victim of the drought too and so many calls to the...
The annual passage of winter to spring finally has begun. This last week has seen a big green change in the neighborhoods, and the smell of fresh-cut grass is in the air. There are a few easy guidelines to having a better-looking lawn without much more work. A longer grass blade means deeper...
