At some point, every gardener has had leftover seeds after sowing the vegetable garden or flowerbed. In addition, saving vegetable and flower seeds is one way to save some money each year (or use that money to feed your gardening habit in other areas). Saving "store bought" seed is the easiest...

Our latest weather pattern is making outdoor fall clean up more difficult than usual. It always can seem overwhelming, but even more so this year thanks to several long rain events. For example, just keeping up (again) with the flush of the lawn has been hard, but add in finding a time when the...

I've got a weird looking weed that looks like grass but has a different light yellow seed head. How do I get rid of it?One grass-like weed that has shown up in the lawn, flower and garden beds lately is yellow nutsedge. Grass-like because it is actually a sedge. It is yellow-green...

This summer, the return of beetles has been evident after an all-time low from the drought in 2012. Beetle numbers have climbed each year since then and this summer have a very strong presence again. Female beetles are attracted to moist soils and locations where there will be plenty of food for...

As our gardening season is winding down, questions to the University of Illinois Extension Master Gardener volunteers have been mixed, and they have been really good questions to share with others: Q: My white pine is losing many needles on the inside, is that normal? A...

What do bees, ants and termites have in common? At some point in the year, they all swarm. Our honeybee may be the most obvious example as the queen gathers up thousands of support bees from the existing hive and heads off to find another location to set up shop. Those swarms can be seen hanging...

Many Master Gardener Help Desk calls at the end of this growing season have been about garden cleanup, as would be expected. Yet other calls have been about handling expected or bonus yields of late season produce, especially root crops and the hard rind squashes. Q: We still have...

When was the last time you had your garden or landscape bed soil tested? If you have never had a soil test done, this first time serves as a baseline for any future testing comparisons and lets you know as soon as the results come back if there are actions to be taken. This fall, before the snow...

Garden catalogs begin to show up in early January and will continue for the next few weeks. Each picture looks better than the next and promises to be bigger or better than last year. Those photos and headlines are exciting, but as you pour over the pages, it is helpful to know how to decipher the...

Warmer temperatures this past week have brought out a variety of insects that would have otherwise stayed hidden. Visits to our Extension offices, photos sent by email, and phone calls have been constant. At the top of the list are stink bugs, also known as squash bugs if you are a gardener. There...

Calls to the Master Gardener Help Desks about using bark mulches in the home landscape and gardens has prompted a Q&A column this week. Organic mulches are used on new plants to help them establish and lessen transplant shock. Mulches conserve soil moisture; keep weeds and grass from...

Our weather continues to put a lot of disease pressure on our flowering crabapples and apple trees due to the cool and wet conditions. The disease that is easily seen right now is Cedar Apple Rust (CAR). CAR is a two-host rust, and right now, it can be seen on the cedars and junipers as a strange...

Colder weather, frozen soil, fallen and windblown leaves, and later any accumulated snow, all will force rabbits to take shelter and begin to look for food anywhere they can. Once the ground is frozen, rabbits will have fewer places to take shelter or hide. Foraging for food will mean staying a lot...

For those homes having suffered greatly from all the storm water, getting the lawn back can take some time. Grasses have a very limited period to come back once under water, just a few days, and yards in many areas were covered a lot longer. If the water came and went but left the lawn covered...

Punxsutawney Phil recently announced another six weeks of winter. That is going to be plenty of time for any late winter or very early spring dormant pruning of our shrubs in the home landscape. Keep in mind, dormant pruning needs to be happen before any spring growth resumes. There are several...

This column has talked about how different plants, insects and diseases have developed based on our unseasonal temperatures and rainfall. Last year, I reported on the Viburnum Leaf Beetle larvae feeding towards the end of June. Our accumulation of growing-degree days being so far ahead, the larvae...

I just attended an Illinois First Detector workshop that addressed several invasive pests, insects and diseases, and even certain kinds of wildlife. Some made their way into Illinois, some just over the state line, and others are in other states that grow food crops we eventually eat. The First...

Just about a month ago, I wrote about getting those houseplants back inside after vacationing in the backyard or on the patio. Now, there are other parts of nature that are trying to follow suit, but are really uninvited houseguests. This includes any kind of insect critter that has begun to look...

All of Illinois has seen and experienced some very different, and not so typical, weather the last two months, and we are still waiting to see what is next. March and April seemed like weather from late spring and, on a few days, even early summer. Since we had all that warmer weather early, many...

Once the fall school term approaches, many home gardeners give up on the vegetable garden as other activities and projects seem to need more attention. Vegetable gardens can provide fresh produce well into October and maybe even early November depending, on what is grown. As the growing season...