I’m just back from leading a Harrigan Holidays garden tour to Ireland, the land where foxgloves grow wild in roadside ditches and Japanese beetles don’t exist. Things are SO much easier on gardeners there. The soil’s good, the rain plentiful, the problems few, and the temperatures hover mainly in the 40-to-70-degree range […]
Thinking about trying some of that dyed mulch? Don’t apply it right before a rain or you might find the color bleeds off and washes away. That’s what happened to at least one local gardener after a recent rain. See the before and after shot at right. “I had black mulch […]
One thing that makes a Master Gardener a master gardener is knowing what plants will work where. That was pretty apparent from the Cumberland County Master Gardeners’ home gardens on this year’s third annual “At Home in the Garden” tour. I got to see five of the seven of them on Sunday, […]
I spend a lot of time telling people about all of the great plants worth trying – especially the new ones. What also might help in your own home-landscape plant-selecting is a list of plants I’m not too wild about. These are ones I’ve personally killed or know have significant drawbacks. They’re […]
Extreme weather gave us another punch this past week – this time near-hurricane winds with a selection of tornado touchdowns. Here’s hoping you’re not one of those who had cars flattened, roofs blown off or worse. This was the scariest storm I’ve ever seen. I live in Cumberland County, not far […]
Don’t let a minor setback like no soil and no space stop you from gardening. Where there’s a will, there’s a way to grow a few cucumbers and an herb or two or three. Our daughter, Erin, lives in Baltimore in a tightly packed urban neighborhood with postage-stamp yards and a lot […]
Gardeners might disagree on whether it’s a good idea to plant non-native plants in the landscape or not, but just about everyone agrees we ought to get rid of invasive species. That might be a hasty – and wrong – conclusion, according to some intriguing new research from Penn State. PSU researchers […]
It’s easy to get in a pot rut, picking the same worn choices every spring for your containers. How many pots of red geraniums, spikes and vinca vines do we really need? One of the best resources for cutting-edge pot-plant ideas is Ray Rogers, a perennial multiple ribbon-winner at the Philadelphia Flower […]
Rain is good, but enough is enough already. We could really use some warmth and sunshine to activate our plants, which have been lagging around waiting for the growing season to show up. All of the new rain on top of saturated soil has created a lot of soggy spots that aren’t […]
Here’s hoping your garden – and house, for that matter – didn’t float away in Saturday’s deluge. Outside, the biggest threat was washouts. If you planted something recently in the path that run-off water decided to take, look for your plant in the gutter down the street. You may be able to salvage […]