That title is not as preposterous as it might sound. Pretty much everyone agrees that fresh vegetables are generally healthy, but a food-science researcher at Penn State University says that whole fruits, vegetables and grains might pose one of our best cancer-fighting hopes. Dr. Jairam Vanamala is a Penn State professor and faculty member at […]
Trying to pull off a landscape that looks good all season long and not just for two weeks in May? This list of plants arranged by when they bloom — month by month — will help with your planning.
One of the best ways to get ideas for your own yard is to see what others have done. Sometimes you’ll run into an area that’s so right that it’s worth “borrowing” directly. Other times, you’ll be inspired to try something similar or to boil together a melting pot of inspirations from other yards into […]
One of the “hazards” of being a cutting-edge plant connoisseur (a.k.a. “plant geek”) is that it’s usually not easy to find the plants you want. If you’re lucky, your favorite garden center will be on the ball as much as you are and have a ready supply of your beauties of choice. But more often […]
Joe Mateer isn’t about to let a little thing like the disease that caused the great Irish potato famine stand in the way of growing a decent back-yard tomato. This retired Lower Swatara Twp. middle-school principal loves his home-grown tomatoes and enjoyed bountiful harvests of them summer after summer for decades. Until last year. Just […]
Just when we thought spring sprang, along came a couple of inches of snow this past Saturday along with near record-setting overnight low temperatures. I took the snow more as an insult – a little more than a harmless, quick-melting “onion snow” but not enough to cause any lasting plant damage. The cold was more […]
Don’t feel like a failure if you keep having to move plants. It’s part of “editing” and making your landscape better and better. Plus, plants like to take a ride in the wheelbarrow every now and then…
One of my favorite days of every year is cool-season vegetable-planting day. I usually try to get peas and onions in the ground sometime around St. Patrick’s Day (which I did this year), but the “big” day is typically the last Saturday of March. That’s when I can finally get out there and plant the […]
I never did like the cold, snow and ice (green easily beats white in my color book), but I’m “enjoying” it less as I rapidly age. That’s why my wife, Sue, and I have been trying to shorten winter the last few years by escaping to Florida for a few weeks, like so many other […]
Now that the 30 inches of snow is gone and washed into the water table, we’re getting a good look at how our landscape plants fared over winter. From what I’m seeing, it looks like things came out in good shape – at least better than the past two cold winters. Extreme as it was, […]