It is way too early to be doing anything outside to brighten our view from inside, yet you can bring some of that spring color indoors by forcing blooms on a number of flowering shrubs and ornamental trees in your home landscape. Early spring flowering shrubs produce their flower buds the summer...
Garden catalogs began to show up in early January and will continue for a while. There may be plenty of phrases and initials that you know. There are some new ones now too. Vegetable descriptions will often include a number of initials at the end. These usually signify that the vegetable has been...
Where you place your dwarf fruit tree home orchard or even the one or two fruit trees you are going to grow make a big difference in how the fruit tree grows and performs. A major consideration is the soil. Fruit trees are no different than other trees and shrubs in your landscape, they need good...
Just what do fruit tree experts mean when they say "you need train your fruit tree?" Home orchardists need to train their trees for structure to encourage fruit production and have a productive, high yielding home orchard. Proper training also gives you a tree that can hold the fruit load without...
It has been a couple of years since I used the month of January to address starting a home orchard. The fruit and vegetable catalogs have begun to replace the holiday flyers in the mailbox and January is not too early to begin planning for a home orchard or expanding the one already there.
There...
Gardeners and commercial growers alike are enjoying the mild winter so far, not worrying about those tender perennials or those later than should have been transplants out in the home landscape or overwintering production crops.
What may be a bit of concern is with the mild winter, so far anyway,...
Just about now, you can see holiday trees sitting in the front or side yard, waiting for the assigned pick up date to be collected and mulched. This is one way to be sure your holiday tree gets recycled to the benefit of the environment. The follow through to getting your tree composted in a...
The University of Extension will again be sponsoring the First Detector Workshops in 2016, for the third year in a row. These workshops have been well received by Arborists, Master Gardeners, City Arborists, Master Naturalists, Landscaper and Nursery business for their timely and strong...
In a normal year this column in the middle of December would be talking about how to deal with wildlife in the yard that damage our valuable landscape plants from feeding damage. This year the ground is open and lawns are still green with no frost in the soil at all. While the weather remains...
Holiday gift plants are always appreciated when given this time of year. The more traditional plants in the past have included Poinsettia, Christmas cactus and Azalea. There are others that are also given like Ornamental Pepper and Cherry, Amaryllis bulbs, Cyclamen and Kalanchoe.
All the holiday...
