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...

This column has not addressed vegetables for a while and now is the time to consider the next round of transplants or seeds to go in the garden. It wasn't but about 7-10 days ago the weather was threatening a frosty night which would have us out covering up tender perennials and some of our...