Last year at this time, I was laboring behind a heavy, gas-powered dethatching machine, tearing up the remnants of a dead front lawn. Nearly the entire quarter-acre of thatch-infested grass died following weeks of punishing late-summer heat and no rain. I’d never lost that much grass before, and I had to reseed […]
Let’s catch up this week on a few gardening shorties and news tidbits you might find useful… The end of Roundup as we know it Did you hear about Bayer AG’s announcement that it plans to pull the controversial ingredient glyphosate from its Roundup weed-killer? Roundup has been the most popular herbicide […]
Labor Day shouldn’t mark the beginning of the end for the vegetable garden. As spring-planted summer crops are harvested or wind down, new crops can take their place to keep the veggie plot chugging along well into fall. With a little protection, some of them can even keep producing into early winter. […]
You might assume that a bag of grass seed contains all or mostly grass seed, but if you pay attention to the labels, you’ll find that’s usually not the case these days. Many bags of retail grass seed contain only half grass seed with the rest made up of fertilizer, coatings, fillers, and […]
No matter how much you know about plants or how many right things you do, sometimes plants just die. Like it or not, it’s a fact of gardening. A lot of the time, easy expiration is a shortcoming of particular plants, such as how dwarf Alberta spruces are spider-mite magnets, or how […]
Those summer rains can be a little tricky when it comes to keeping plants happy. Just because we’ve had a downpour doesn’t mean water has made it to where it counts, which is down to just below and all around our plant roots. Young and newly planted plants are particularly susceptible to […]
Plants sometimes just aren’t happy where you put them. Good plants just sit there and seemingly sulk, barely growing or worse – starting down that road to a slow death. Once you realize you’re dealing with a “failure-to-thrive” situation, the best thing you can do (usually) is dig up the plant and […]
The designers of Penn State Arboretum’s new Pollinator and Bird Garden leaned heavily on research to determine the features, layout, and plant selection of this three-acre garden, which opened last month just down Park Avenue from Beaver Stadium. Spots of it are very colorful already. But what struck me during my opening-day […]
Real-estate agents often harp about how important it is for a house to have “good curb appeal” because that’s the first thing potential buyers see… and what forms their critical first impression. The same holds true for a landscape. What you see in that first view tells you you’re about to behold something […]
Sometimes I’m disappointed when I see a highly hyped garden for the first time or see a formerly superb garden that’s going downhill. Other times, though, I’m pleasantly surprised by gardens that aren’t hailed or even much known at all. The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens falls into that latter category. So […]