That soaking rain we got Friday and Saturday came at a good time. I got 1.6 inches — enough to do some actual good for plant roots and lawns. The rain not only wetted parched roots and broke the high-90 heat wave, it was enough to switch most plants back into growth mode […]
Dry soil isn’t always the cause when plants brown out in summer. Some plants just aren’t keen on heat and sun…
That was brutal. We hit 101 degrees Saturday, and unless you’ve been watering, the soil moisture is becoming threateningly dry. I’m already getting questions about evergreens turning into everbrowns and how to stop those hydrangeas from wilting. (Answers: When a conifer turns brown, it’s already dead. And hydrangeas often wilt from heat alone, […]
I’m still marveling at the layout of two of the finest home gardens I’ve ever seen – Jenny Rose Carey’s 4½-acre property near Ambler and Michael Colibraro’s small backyard getaway in suburban Willow Grove. A full bus load of us got to see both in the same afternoon last week in our latest […]
What to do about those pesky grubs eating the roots out from under your lawn? You might first want to check out the hair arrangement on the grub butts. Seriously. There’s an important clue there…
Heading off soon for some well deserved vacation time? You can’t pull weeds or fertilize the pots while you’re at the beach, but you can read about gardening — whether it’s on a Kindle or old-fashioned paper. I thought I’d share some new titles I’ve run across that are intriguing. See if […]
It takes a lot to astound me these days, but Longwood Gardens’ new “Light” exhibit that opened over the weekend did the trick. I’ve never seen anything like it. The sheer volume of lights spread in eight displays over 23 acres is mind-boggling enough. But the artful arrangement and the life-like way […]
Here’s hoping you didn’t lose any trees or big branches in those stormy “microbursts” the area has seen in the last week and a half. Joel Burcat’s nearly century-old American elm — one of the few in the Harrisburg area to survive Dutch elm disease — didn’t fare too well in one of them. […]
We lost one of our own last week at way too young of an age. Fairview Twp. gardener extraordinaire Christi Konopski died last Thursday morning at age 46 after battling breast cancer for more than 5 years. Christi’s backyard gardens were a retreat and a sanctuary as she went through agonizing surgeries […]
If we hate to care for the lawn, then why do we keep growing so much of it? Here’s a list of the top three things you should be doing to the lawn but probably aren’t and three things you probably are doing to the lawn but shouldn’t.