A fellow Illinois Extension colleague shared a blog last year titled "Kitchen Scrap Gardening." You might have heard of these home kitchen experiments regrowing foods from leftover seeds, stems, and scraps. Using the stem leftover from my last post on freezing...
Celery is one of the foods that tends to go limp in my refrigerator. I do not use celery as much in recipes as, say, onions or carrots. I never enjoy throwing out the limp celery, and set out to find a way to save as much as I could of my purchase. Try 1: Make lots of celery recipes in...
Most of us gardeners are itching to get gardening this time of year, which is why Extension offers lots of great programming in the winter to get gardeners excited and inspired! Next up on our gardening calendar is our new From the Ground Up program coming up at Allerton Park and...
I once had a squirrel enter my house from an upstairs window, which promptly ran downstairs to finish my breakfast of eggs and toast on the dining room table. My dog and two cats watched from the sidelines incredulously; no doubt asking themselves why they didn't get invited to...
Every summer, gardens at home are hit or miss on what grows and what doesn't. Sometimes a plant just grows and grows! This was the case for the gardener who brought me multiple bunches of hot peppers – jalapeños, poblanos, and lots of small red hot peppers. Just for fun, I decided to string and...
Kokedama String Gardens Get creative with your houseplant displays this winter and try hanging a few plants in the window to create a string garden. The term String Gardening is a term that has become attached to a style of Japanese bonsai known as kokedama, which literally means...
Fudge, tea rings, macaroons, baklava, pralines, and brittles! These are some of the nutty holiday sweets we indulgence in this time of year. Besides these delectable offerings, unshelled nuts to be eaten in their natural state are common around the holiday season as well. I'm going to date myself,...
How well do you know Thanksgiving turkey safety tips? Let's find out! Thanks to the "Turkey for the Holidays" website from UI Extension for these tips! Q: How long does a turkey take to thaw? A: Allow about 24...
A problem that seems to be an increasing across the area with oak trees is Bacterial Leaf Scorch. Up until about 2012 or so, this disease was considered a minor problem that oak trees typically overcame. Here recently, this disease is causing a slow decline of our older oak trees once they become...
Do you have landscape plants that the leaves are stippled or showing yellow sickly spots and a few leaves are twisted as though they are wilting? You may even notice a few little white spots on some of the leaves and...
