In Case You Missed It…
December 19th, 2023
The 2023 gardening season took us down a lot of roads… too much and too little rain, the sudden appearance/disappearance of spotted lanternflies, more bans of invasive plants, and gardening in a smoky haze, to name a few.
2023 was another year when we had to deal with sometimes-too-much and sometimes-too-little rain.
I thought I’d close out the year by highlighting some of what I wrote about in 2023, giving you second-chance links in case you missed a post of interest.
Here you go… and happy 2024!
On this website (free, unlimited reads):
I start every new year with a look at what experts say are some of the hot gardening trends of the coming year. See Gardening Trends of 2023.
I then wrote four e-columns highlighting some of the best new plants hitting the market.
Best New Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruits of 2023
Best New Annual Flowers of 2023
Best New Perennial Flowers of 2023
Best New Trees and Shrubs of 2023
Another best-plant rundown I do every year is plants that have won awards. See Award-Winning Plants of 2023.
And these are some of the other topics I wrote about here in 2023…
Better Naked (a look at plants that look their best without leaves in the dormant season)
Think twice before accepting this pass-along plant (chameleon plant).
Just Say No to These Pass-Along Plants (not all plants people want to give you for free are worth taking)
My Bulb Experiment: Three Years Later (my real-world experience with planting 16 kinds of bulbs… which are faring well and which aren’t)
How One of the Warmest Winters Caused Some of My Worst Plant Damage Ever (the irony and trouble of getting winter weather that’s a little too warm… or unstable)
Composting in Place (no need to lug all of those yanked weeds to the compost bin… most can be tossed nearby where you can’t see them to break down in place)
Lanternfly Obsession (how people are overreacting when they see an infestation of spotted lanternflies for the first time)
Black Thumb? I Don’t Think So (I don’t buy the idea that you’re either born to garden or not… like anything else, the more you learn, the better you get)
The Case for Weeds (not everybody thinks weeds are all bad… at least some of them are here for good reason)
Winners and Losers in a Garden of Change (our growing conditions are changing, and that’s been good on some fronts but not so good on others)
Gardeners Are Not Normal (if you mulch in the rain or pay attention to the alignment of hairs on a beetle grub’s butt, you might want to take this little quiz)
The One Piece of Gardening Advice I Don’t Agree With (I usually go with wherever research leads, but I still can’t buy the one on avoiding improving the soil)
The weeds are getting an upper hand in my meadow garden.
My Mini-Meadow Year 2: The Weeds Are Winning (I was hoping for better results in my mini-meadow experiment, but so far the weeds have the upper hand)
On the PennLive.com website
(you have to be a PennLive subscriber to access many of these)
I write a garden column that posts most Thursdays on PennLive.com (website of The Patriot-News). Some of the topics I covered there in 2023:
10 Things Gardeners Should Put on Their Bucket Lists (from growing a fig to introducing a child to gardening, these are 10 bucket-list items for every gardener)
What the New 2023 USDA Hardiness Zone Map Means for Pennsylvania Gardeners (a look at how the new zone map pushed almost all of central Pa. into the half-zone warmer Zone 7a)
The Best Vegetable Varieties for Pennsylvania Gardens (not all vegetable varieties are created equal… these are the best of the best in my experience)
How to Use Photos to Turn Your Yard into An Outdoor Living Space (Shippensburg gardener Jill Hudock shares her tips on how to re-do your yard using sketched-over photos)
How to Save Money on Flowers by Direct-Seeding Them Outside (cut your flower budget with this how-to on growing plants outside in the ground from seed)
Trees for Bloom All Season Long (it’s possible to have trees in bloom all growing season if you plant these solid choices)
Flower Bulbs in the Lawn: Does It Really Work? (a look at my first-hand experiment with planting small spring-blooming bulbs in the lawn)
The 10 Most Beautiful Flowers for Pennsylvania Yards (if I had to pick the 10 showiest, most impressive, eye-grabbing flowers for our climate, these are it)
It’s hard to beat hibiscus for sheer showiness. This is Proven Winners’ Summerific Evening Rose.
Ten Great Children’s Gardens to Plug Into Your Vacation Plans (if you’re trying to get kids interested in plants and gardening, put these public gardens with superb children’s gardens on your agenda)
Make the Most Of Your Yard After Dark with a Twilight Garden (Cumberland County Master Gardener Susan Janton offer tips on how to design and plant a garden that looks good after the sun goes down)
Make Your Garden Glow with These Landscape Lighting Tips (landscape lighting is another way to make the yard more usable at night, and this column tells how while being mindful of nighttime pollinators)
Cut Your Own Bouquets Using Home-Grown Flowers (cut flowers are a hot trend lately… this is a how-to on growing your own supply of them for DIY vases)
What Your Weeds Might Be Trying to Tell You (the kind of weeds you have in your yard can give important clues on your growing conditions and therefore what plants are likely to do well… or not)
The Joy of Deadheading: When and How to Clip Those Spent Summer Flowers (a rundown on the summer chore of deadheading)
12 Ways You Can Harm Plants that You Might Not Know About (from volcano mulching to mower blight to walking on wet soil, these are some of the lesser-known ways to damage or kill plants)
5 Ways to Salvage Cold-Averse Plants for Another Year (how to start cuttings, convert potted tropicals into winter houseplants, and store those winter-wimpy plants)
The Well Composted Gardener (What’s good to add to the compost pile and what’s not? This column gives you a detailed list.)
Here’s How to Keep Your Plants Alive through Frost (if you’re into milking every last inch out of the growing season, this column gives ideas… plus other cold-weather protecting tips)
Where Do Garden Bugs Go in Winter? (a look at the many curious techniques that bugs have developed to survive our winters, plus a bug-by-bug accounting of how 43 of them do it)
Eight Ways to Make Your Yard Look Better in Winter (now that our winters are no longer wire-to-wire snow-covered, people are paying more attention to what the yard looks like from November through February)
Some 2023 This Weekend columns of ongoing interest
Besides the Thursday column, I write a “This Weekend in the Garden” feature for PennLive.com that each Friday covers three things you should be doing around the yard and/or other newsy things you ought to know about.
A selection of them from 2023…
Snow makes good plant insulation.
Why Snow Can Be Good for Plants, Outside Jobs in Winter, and Smashing Lanternfly Eggs
Yard Do-Now’s vs. Can-Wait’s, Healing Winter Insults, and Fixing Grub and Vole Lawn Damage
How/When to Prune Shrubs, Training Young Trees, and Rose-Care Tips from Hershey Gardens
Clover in the Lawn, How to Tell If Plants Are Dead or Alive, and Penn State’s “Soil from the Past”
Alternatives to Grass, Bumps in the Lawn, and the Dog-Vomit Fungus
How to Get Rid of Invasive Plants, Digging New Beds, and Deciding What to Do about the Lanternflies
Tips for Renovating and Improving the Lawn
Using Leaves, Longwood’s Luxury Compost, and Saving Milkweed Seeds
And Some from 2022:
Finally, here are a few of my posts from 2022 that might still be of interest:
On my website
How the State’s New Fertilizing Rules Affect Your Lawn Care
Eight Weed Mistakes (things we do and don’t do to make weed problems worse than they ought to be)
I’m not a big fan of mulching.
Should We Be Cutting Back on Peat Moss? (some say peat moss should be banned for environmental reasons)
My Most Favorite Gardening Jobs
My Least Favorite Gardening Jobs
Editing the Landscape (how to assess a landscape and move/add plants to make it better)
What a Dead Plant Can Teach Us (how we can become better gardeners by figuring out and learning from what killed plants)
When to Plant Which Edibles? (a list of when to plant assorted vegetables)
The Best (and Worst) Times to Do Things Around the Yard
On PennLive.com
Invasive Garden Plants: If You Yank Them, Then What Do You Plant Instead?
New Naturalism (a look at the increasing popular style of making our landscapes mimic nature)
Bee Lawns: A “Lazy-Mower” Way to Help Pollinators?
Cool-climate plants such as birds nest spruce are suffering in our hotter summers.
Our Eight Plant-Deadly Seasonal Weather Sins (eight weather issues that pose the most trouble for gardeners)
Gardening in the “New Normal” (new factors we ought to consider in how we garden and what we plant as the climate changes)
20 of the Best Groundcover Plants to Head Off Weeds
Rebloomers (why gardeners want shrubs that bloom a second time each season… and how breeders are delivering)
The 18 Best Perennials for a Season of Continuous Bloom
The 10 Easiest Vegetables for Beginners to Grow
The 12 Best Trees for Your Yard that You Never Heard Of
10 Ways to Attract Birds to Your Yard This Summer