Now that March has went out like a lamb, these warmer days we are really motivating me to get out into the garden and set things in motion for the 2019 growing season.  Right now is a perfect time to direct seed many of our cool-season vegetable crops, but don’t go too wild with planting or...

Winter is an excellent time for reflection on the past year’s growing season and any gardening successes or failures to account for next year.  In this season of multitudes of seed catalog mailings, I have found it to be an ideal time to set gardening goals for the coming year during the down...

One of the single best things you can do to improve your garden soil is to add organic matter.  By adding significant amounts of organic matter, you are putting fuel back into the nutrient cycle which naturally adds plant nutrients to our soil and lessens (or eliminates) the need for...

This week marks the half way point for the 2018 Illinois Ginseng Harvesting Season, which runs from the first Saturday in September through Nov 1.  Did you even know that ginseng grows in Illinois, let alone the fact that there is a regulated harvest of this valuable native plant? ...

Garlic is a long-season, over-winter crop that does best when planted in the fall.  It can then be harvested in the early summer, which allows space for another summer crop.  This is rather unusual timing in the gardening world and it has always interested me for that reason. ...

Recently, my wife, Amanda, noticed that something was chewing on the nice stand of kale she planted in our vegetable garden.  Initially, I brushed it off to the usual, acceptable amount of insect damage kale can withstand and still produce a harvestable crop.  Typically, kale has some...

With last week’s Easter snow, it is hard to believe that the frost-free dates for our area are fast approaching.  Hopefully April will follow a more March-like tradition of “in like lion and out like a lamb”.  The “frost-free” date for the Champaign area is around April 15th, which is...

Potatoes are a cool season vegetable that are among the world’s food staples, ranking number four in the list behind rice, wheat and corn.  This native to the South American Andes was domesticated around 7,000 years ago.  Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers observed indigenous use of the...