Hello? Does this thing still work? I'm dusting off the old Green Speak Blog to encourage anyone who has subscribed to this blog to check out Good Growing. This is another blog I've worked on for the past several years with my colleagues. This will be the final post on the Green Speak blog, which will eventually be removed from the Extension website. I will likely repost much of these articles after updating them onto Good Growing. If you enjoy my writing and want to...
Some things in nature are a delight to observe. Rainbows, thunderstorms, and fungus, well, specifically fairy ring fungus. Fairy rings are near perfect circles of toadstools, often seen in the lawn following a period of wet weather. Fairy rings can also be observed as a ring of abnormal turf that is a bright green or a halo of dead grass. Lore surrounds these curious circular formations. As far back as Medieval times, people believed fairy rings appeared after a band of fairies had danced on...
It seems during every class I teach, or group I talk with, there are two things I say every time: 1) Read your pesticide labels, and 2) test your soil. It is what I call my "Extension Mantra." The reason I routinely tell folks to read labels and test soil is not that I get a kick-back from pesticide companies and soil labs, it is because these two simple tasks could save Illinois homeowners money. It is a routine for me to read pesticide labels front to back, sometimes multiple times, to make...
One of my favorite times of year to garden is in the fall. Growing vegetables during autumn in Illinois as the weather cools and daylight dwindles, can be a bit of a challenge, but the reward is quite sweet. The fall and winter garden is not a place for tomatoes, peppers, or many of our favorite summer veggies. Instead, what we grow are cool season crops. Adaptation to low temperatures allows most cool-season crops to survive light freezes, while others, such as kale, will tolerate 20 degrees...
There is something about a butterfly that makes most smile. As I travel from speaking location to meeting to my garden in Central Illinois, I smile each time I see a monarch butterfly flit by in the distance. However, I also cringe at the handful of times a monarch butterfly strikes my car window. Mother Nature has designed for so much, but she could not have foreseen the implications of the automobile. In addition to cars, monarchs face many hardships through their lives from egg, caterpillar...
This year I was so hopeful. My yard has been cultivated, or perhaps a better term is 'uncultivated,' in hopes of creating an oasis of beneficial insects. I neglected to reapply mulch, leaving a bare patch of soil in my planting bed. It soon became a delight to my kids to watch songbirds taking dust baths. I let the violets have their way, and they rewarded us with an outstanding flower show this spring and an excellent groundcover up until mid-summer when the heat and sun forced remaining...
Last Sunday night we arrived home in Macomb, tired from a short trip visiting family in Quincy. Moreover, hauling around an infant and two young boys full of boundless energy tend to produce weary parents. Upon opening the door into the house, we were greeted as usual by our dog Murphy. Excited as a puppy to see us though his years now approach eleven. As is our routine I immediately let the dog out while preparing beds and fetch sleeping children from the car. Returning to let Murphy inside,...
Observation is part of the fun of gardening. Waking up in the morning, I let out my dog Murphy, and walk through my yard studying the intricacies and habits of the plants in my landscape. A morning dew is helpful to spot spider webbing or allow the tiny hairs on a flower petal to shine in the rising sun. Walking through the garden in the early morning is just as good as drinking a cup coffee, although coffee certainly makes the experience better. If a neighbor were to peek over the fence, they...
Year three of growing cascade hops and I finally invested time to install poles for the bines to properly train. Lacking money, to buy actual poles, the overgrown wooded area behind the McDonough County Extension office yielded several dead snags. Ideally, when harvesting poles for hops, select trees that are naturally rot resistant such as Eastern red cedar, black locust, or larch. Because my venture into hops is purely experimental, I used mostly dead oak snags for poles (and they were closer...
Hooray! Winter has returned. While sane people stayed inside, horticulture educators like myself headed outside to take pictures. Many homeowners and gardeners may be feeling a panic rising in their chest seeing their emerging plants and spring blooming bulbs covered in snow. Oddly, I find it a great time to examine how plants respond to this kind of environmental stress. I'm also the neighbor who grows a weed to see what the flower looks like. In an effort to capture what may be the final...
