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. I thought I’d close out the year by highlighting some of what I wrote about […]
The world’s biggest and longest running indoor flower show, the Philadelphia Flower Show, is set to bloom next March 2-10, and the 2024 theme will be “United by Flowers.” Show officials say visitors can expect a “massive, immersive, and flower-filled entrance garden,” plus large-scale floral creations and gardens designed by florists and garden […]
Now that another gardening season is in the bag, it’s a good time to look back and see what lessons we can draw from it. The 2023 gardening year was another one that brought us lots of twists and turns, not the least of which was more erratic weather and feast-or-famine rainfall. […]
Most of the gardening questions I get this time of year begin with the words, “Is it too late to…” or “Can I still…” Mid-fall is a confusing, kinda-over/kinda-not time in the garden. It’s a time when frost usually has killed the summer vegetables and annuals and slowed the growth of everything […]
Are you one of those gardeners who already has buzzed everything to the ground and packed away the trowels for the season? Not so fast. As the sage philosopher Yogi Berra once pointed out, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” And in the garden, it ain’t over until it’s really cold […]
I planted a small meadow on a bank in my back yard for two main reasons: 1.) I was looking for a low-care, low-cost way to cover a tough site that’s not easy to work. 2.) I liked the idea of adding diversity to encourage pollinators and beneficial insects. That’s why I […]
I’m generally a believer in following what research reveals, especially if it’s solid research and backed up by multiple sources. But the one bit of gardening advice that I still just can’t buy is the one about not improving the soil before planting. This fairly widespread guidance comes from findings that plant […]
It occurred to me one day while inspecting the butt hairs of a lawn grub that gardeners are not normal people. We gardeners tend to pay attention to things that “regular” people don’t, we don’t notice odors that regular people do, and we often engage in activities that would curl the skin of […]
The only thing certain about gardening is that things change. Don’t ever think you’ve got gardening figured out because this is a moving target if ever there was one. The environment around us changes. New bugs show up. New plants come and others go. The weather changes – sometimes […]
Had enough of yanking weeds this season? No matter how good or bad a growing season turns out, weeds always seem to thrive. But that’s one of the traits that makes weeds such survivors – they’re pretty good at rolling with whatever punches nature (and gardeners) throw at them. Rather than […]