Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator Spring is coming, but may be a bit late compared to what we have gotten used to. It is great that plants, insects and wildlife seem to know when it is right to show up. Insects will typically develop right along with their plant hosts and...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator Just about this time every year, homeowners that have a Sycamore tree in the home landscape begin to notice problems. Leafing out late or seeing a second set of buds and then leaves form is not normal. While Sycamores seem to be the worst...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator Cucumbers, Squash, Zucchini, Pumpkins and Melons are all considered vine crops out there in the garden. Cucumbers are known for attracting cucumber beetles and a disease called cucumber wilt. Squash attract the squash bug and squash vine...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator There has been some recent press covering cicadas in Illinois this summer. While we can have a few cicadas every year, the brood of concern will be invading northwestern Illinois in the summer of 2014. According to the experts that follow...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator Our beautiful ornamental flowering crabapples that grace so many yards have a couple of foliage diseases that can really impact how they look once the bloom show is gone. Both diseases readily infect the crabapple leaf. Apple Scab (...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator Cold weather has already given peach trees in the home orchard a knock down punch for 2014. When temperatures reach 10 degrees, peach flower buds start to die. For every degree below -10 degrees, we lose another 10% of what was left until...

Our ornamental landscape beds are really going through the process of getting ready for winter in a big way now. The weather pattern with warm days and cooler to cold nights has triggered the plants physiology from one of active growth to that of preparing for dormancy. Once that begins, there are...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator Most of the spring blooming shrubs and small ornamental trees in the home landscape already have their flower buds ready to go right now. The flower buds were created last summer and have overwintered protected by insulating bud scales....

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator July has brought us a mild summer with a fair amount of rain. It was not until the end of July that our yards and gardens began to look more typical – drying ground with some cracking showing up as the soil did begin to dry. If you missed...

We are lucky here in the Midwest to be able to enjoy spring and summer bulbs alike. We plant spring bulbs in the fall and summer bulbs in the spring. We let spring bulbs overwinter in our garden beds and dig up summer bulbs to overwinter indoors. Our spring bulbs need a cold treatment to trigger...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator January is not too early to start to plan for a new home orchard or to consider replacements for aging fruit trees in an existing orchard. There are several different kinds of fruit trees to consider, including apple, cherry, peach, pear...

The giving of holiday plants has become for many homes an annual family tradition. The one we think of most often of course is the poinsettia, yet mums, azaleas, cyclamen, and Christmas cactus are also given frequently. How well those holiday plants hold up and continue to give us enjoyment depends...

Gardeners would normally see damage from grubs or sod webworms this time of year. With our rainfall this summer, grub damage if they are even out there will be minimal. The winter weather took out a large percentage of the Japanese beetle grubs, so we have not seen that big population we have in...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator   Spring is a good time to be planting trees, shrubs and evergreens in the home landscape. We have lost so many trees to the Emerald Ash borer, other wood boring insects and diseases lately that some communities look bare,...

We should have been expecting it, but no one is really ever ready for the first really cold weather we get. Our hardy trees, shrubs and evergreens or perennials weren't really impacted by low 30's and upper 30's that areas in the Fox Valley received. Gardeners do plant lots of tender flowers for...

There are some 8000 thousand ant species around and on occasion ants can become an annoyance in the home. Most often they are a bother in the spring of the year when soils outdoors begin to warm again. Right now with our soils next to the home being warmer yet, we can have ants from outside...

Landscapes flower and vegetable beds sure needed some moisture; just getting it all at once is not ideal. Couple the high humidity, temperatures together, and we have great opportunities for disease outbreaks in the yard. Some general precautions would be NOT to work in the beds at all while the...

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...

All the rain and cooler weather has really started a change in the home landscape and vegetable garden. The fall and cooler season vegetables really like this weather and have been growing well. Those warm season vegetables like tomatoes and peppers begin to shut down as night time temperatures...

Down the Garden Path Richard Hentschel, Extension Educator Plants in the garden (and insects too) develop based on something called "Growing Degree Days" or GDD for short. This is an accumulation of heat units using a base of 50 degrees. For every degree above fifty goes towards the growing...