We have some real signs spring is going to happen, and the calls, emails and visits to the Illinois Extension Master Gardener Help Desks often start with "What's the best time to…?" Here are a few FAQs for the start of the home gardening and landscape season. Q) What is the best...

Late February to early March is just about the right timing for household and houseplant insects to show up. Over-wintering outdoor insects in the home become indoor household nuisance pests, and new insects may just be waking up. Plus, houseplants that survived the move in from the patio last fall...

This time of year, questions about starting seeds indoors are common. The following FAQs should serve as a helpful refresher for the seasoned gardener and a great resource for all the first-timers. Q: I have a bag of open potting soil in the garage. Why must I use soilless seed...

When we have very cold weather, it is great to see snow come along with it, for our garden plants at least. Snow cover provides insulation from the drying winter sun and the extreme air temperatures. A good snow cover protects above ground plant parts and helps them survive the winter. In parts of...

About this time of year, Extension starts getting calls and emails asking about the right pollinators for the home orchard since it is time to order from the fruit tree catalogs. You may recall that we touched on this a few weeks back, but let's really dive in this time. Catalogs provide a great...

We finally got some dry days to catch up on planting the family vegetable garden and dealing with the landscape beds, weeding, edging, and putting down composts and other kinds of organic matter. Unlike the farmer who has to make some hard planting decisions this late in the season, our annual...

Garden catalogs began to show up in early January and will continue for the few weeks. Each picture looks better than the next and promises to be bigger, better, than last year. There may be plenty of phrases or words that are unfamiliar or perhaps you have seen them before and never went far...

The end-of-year sales and holiday greetings have barely ceased and already the gardening catalogs have begun to arrive in your mailbox and inbox. Some catalogs are still pretty specific, vegetables or flowers, but not both. More and more catalogs today are now offering a bit of everything like the...

Home orchardists struggle from spring through the summer to make timely cover sprays, hoping to harvest good quality fruit. Several practices can help you grow fruits that are the envy of the neighborhood. Apples may be the hardest of the tree fruits to manage, as there are a couple of diseases...

If you enjoy fruits like blueberries and apples, or if you plant summer squash or fall pumpkins in your garden, you have a reason to protect our pollinators. Without pollinators, including butterflies and bees, the flowering plants they visit would not produce food. The pollination process also...

The weather is at least providing gardeners with consistently warming temperatures (mostly) that are in turn warming our garden soil. Of course, what is not so welcoming is the rain seems to continue and not just light spring showers either. Gardeners and farmers alike cannot find a drying pattern...

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 – apple, cherry, peach, pear, and plum. As we live in the northern portion of Illinois, apple is...