Skip to main content

Good Growing

Latest Posts

Ethnobotany: the power of plants and people background image woven baskets with native fruits and nuts including walnuts

Ethnobotany: The power of plants and people

Plants have played a major role in human development for as long as people have inhabited the earth. Human interaction with plants has been and continues to be a complex relationship. Many species have provided critical resources for sustaining life, while others threaten human harm if encountered...
Finish this story
Massive fruit, myths, and mastodons: the Osage orange fruit of Osage orange in metal bucket

Massive fruit, myths, and mastodons: Osage orange

While traveling through the Midwest on leaf peeping adventures, modern day explorers may find a rather nondescript tree with unique, distinct fruit. A medium-sized tree adorned with large, round, chartreuse colored fruit can be easily identified as Maclura pomifera, or Osage orange....
Finish this story
Tea leaves spilling out of a tea cup

Growing tea in Illinois

Grow your own tea Did you know, you can grow the most popular drink in the world right here in Illinois? If you’re wondering how to harvest Pepsi or Coke from a tree, I’m sorry, you have the wrong drink. Second to water, tea reigns supreme as the world's favorite drink, and it has been for...
Finish this story
Autumn allergies: don’t blame goldenrod bee on yellow goldenrod bloom

Autumn allergies: don’t blame goldenrod

As the growing season draws to an end, temperatures cool, woody plants prepare for dormancy, and we enjoy the last blooms of the season. For many of us, autumn also means sniffles and sneezes caused by seasonal allergies. Seasonal allergies are a reaction to airborne pollen entering the body and...
Finish this story
a thirteen-lined ground squirrel eating a seed

Managing thirteen-lined ground squirrel

Gnawing Rodents and Landscape Shrubs This past spring, I found myself at a friend’s house enjoying some barbeque on the back deck. He remarked on the issue they had with ground squirrels, burrowing all over their yard and landscape beds. Later in the year, a phone call came into the office of a...
Finish this story
Wheel bugs: good bugs with a painful bite. Adult wheel bug climbing from a yellow flower to a brown flower.

Wheel bugs: Good bugs with a painful bite

As we transition from summer to fall and the temperatures start cooling off, many of us will be spending more time outdoors. While enjoying our time outdoors, we often encounter various insets we may not have seen or noticed earlier in the growing season. One such insect is the unusual, and to some...
Finish this story