Discover and celebrate the power of pollinators and the monarch butterfly as they migrate across Central Illinois next month at the third-annual Monarch Madness co-sponsored by the Macon County Master Gardeners and Rock Springs Nature Center! Be a part of this family friendly and hands-on...
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been getting many phone calls from people describing giant wasps in their yards. These have turned out to be the Eastern Cicada Killer (Sphecius speciosus), which is a mild mannered wasp. The stinger on the female wasp is used to paralyze cicadas and the male...
Parents, teachers, and students: welcome back to school! Along with education, social engagement, and student personal growth, food is a major part of school culture. Consider the different times foods can pop up during the school day: Breakfast – at home, on-the-go to school, or a school-...
Aggressive and invasive are terms commonly used by gardeners to describe those garden perennials that tend to overtake their intended areas. It all starts with good intentions. Usually, a garden friend who wants to share a division of a plant they have an abundance of or a gorgeous plant at the...
Soil health is getting a lot of attention and it well deserved. Do you know why? First, the most well-known and essential benefit of healthy soil is food production. Healthy soil is full of organisms that turn dead matter and minerals into vital plant nutrients. President Franklin D. Roosevelt...
Don't we all wish we could capture the beauty of summer, with its lush growth of greens, yellows, purples and pinks? Recently, University of Illinois Piatt County Master Gardner Kristi Pyatt shared a different way to preserve those colors and shapes of growing plants; Eco-Dying!
A small group of...
Salsa in the summer? Yes please! I like salsa as part of my lunch during summer as a way of getting vegetables in my diet in a different way from my usual bell pepper slices. My trouble with jarred salsa I buy is that the sodium amount is higher than I would like. I also prefer my salsa less...
What do you do when you want to grow veggies at an office surrounded by gravel with no available growing space? You create containers! This was the dilemma this spring at our Clinton Extension Office. The summer Junior Master Gardener program was starting and we needed a way to grow vegetables with...
At this time of the year, the wildflower, Wild Carrot or Queen Anne's Lace, is in bloom. It is known for its beautiful white compound umbels of flowers that measure 2 to 5 inches across and is the source of our cultivated...
Many people long for summer during the winter months, but then…the heat waves hit and it's hard not to feel withered. To help you and your living landscape, I've comprised a few tips to help combat the heat and summer blues that hot dry conditions can inflict on your lawn.
First, try not to...
