Bird seed and feeding birds over the winter is an annual discussion with homeowners that enjoy having birds in the yard over the winter. First, the bird seed talk everyone should hear or read. All bird seed mixes are not created equal. Selecting bird seed means buying seed to attract your...

Every season brings new surprises to homeowners. Spring is no exception to this. Finding out the 300 spring bulbs you planted last fall are actually white, not the yellow the plant label said they were. Less enjoyable surprises would be finding out the young trees you planted to replace the Ash...

Seems like summer took so long to get here with weather that was enjoyable and now those unspoken words have begun to enter our everyday lives, heard on the TV, references to it on the radio, thinking about ordering hot chocolate or hot cider instead of coffee, farm stands offering more than just...

Nearly all our spring blooming plants have finished now and are in the process of putting their energy into storage if a bulb. Next year's flowers depend on the plants ability to continue to produce food reserves until they naturally die down. The very early spring bulbs have already disappeared...

Here we are at the end of May and maybe the beds in the backyard look ok or maybe not. We love our lawns, yet grass can move into our landscape beds in a stealth like manner, while we are waiting for better weather for bed weeding and edging. Putting a strong clean line on the landscape beds...

Extension offices routinely get phone calls after a fruit tree has been planted that second or third year in the home orchard or landscape about what is going on, "Why don't I get any fruit?". Often times what is happening is natural, sometimes we contribute to the delay of fruit production by the...

The weather is sure messing with our plans for early work in the yard. There are at least a couple of projects that not only can be done, but should be done as soon as possible and at the right stage of growth. Perhaps the more critical project is that of our earliest sprays in the home orchard....

Lawns are really greening up nicely over the last couple of weeks courtesy of Mother Nature. Lawns will naturally green up in the spring anyway, yet the rains and warmer temperatures really help too. Questions to the Extension offices and the Master Gardener Help Desks have been all about lawns and...

Caterpillars are frequently collected by students for science classes, parents to show their little ones the amazing change from caterpillar to butterfly or moth. It is how they are handled after being collected that makes the difference in how successful your project is. Most of our caterpillars...

Insects are very interesting to watch as they go about their lives in nature from early spring through Fall. We notice them when something goes wrong or missing on our valuable landscape plants and flowers, especially when those insects are considered detrimental to growing our prized flowers or...

Last year gardeners were caught off guard with outbreaks of scale insects on their trees and shrubs. University of Illinois Master Gardeners received many calls of Magnolia foliage turning black and sticky residue on lawn furniture, yard ornaments and if you stood there for even a minute, all over...

What a treat to have some early warming weather the last few days. Of course it is way too early to be doing much other than a little debris pick up out in the yard. This weather does allow us to see what has been happening outdoors though. It is pretty easy to see what the rabbits have been...

Shopping for the gardener in the family this holiday season? There are more gardening tools out there than you can imagine. There are tools for the vegetable garden, flower beds, trees, shrubs and evergreens. And, there are tools for every job in the yard. When choosing a gift, consider giving a...

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...

Many homeowners know about the Emerald Ash Borer and the vast amount of destruction to our ash tree population and likely the millions of dollars being spent to treat, remove dead trees and the replacement trees. Now we have another invasive pest, the "Jumping Worm". Jumping worms are native to...

Recent cool weather and the temperatures especially at night are beginning to trigger changes in our home landscape and vegetable gardens. There has been a little bit of fall color beginning on some shade trees, mostly red maple cultivars and some on burning bush. It will be our cool nights and...

To control or not to control, that is the question. There are two grubs that historically have caused us to ponder the control question, our native Masked Chafer (White Grub) and our not so native Japanese Beetle. The Masked Chafer will lay eggs in the latter half of July in the northern parts if...

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,...

Let's start with a few confusing sentences this week. You plant spring flowering bulbs in the fall and summer flowering bulbs in the spring. You dig up summer bulbs in the fall. You divide spring bulbs in late summer. Your favorite spring bulbs are winter hardy and for them to bloom in the spring...

Wonder why sometimes the vegetables in the garden don't grow or produce as well as they should have? Besides the usual influences of our general weather conditions like too much or too little soil moisture, another factor is something called growing degree days. This is based on heat units...