Gardens can still look reasonably good this time of year if you’ve stayed on top of maintenance, policed for pests, and kept things watered. However, strings of 90-degree days and other life matters have a way of eating into garden care, leading to August yards that, well, aren’t always at the top of […]
Though the spotted lanternfly has been annoying a lot of central-Pennsylvania gardeners for two or three years now, not everyone has experienced the misfortune yet of hosting this new Asian import in their yard. Be ready. You may be about to meet them for the first time. Lanternflies morph into their adult […]
One question I get a lot – and can’t answer very well – is when and how much to fertilize plants. It’s another one of those gardening questions where the only truly accurate answer is, “It depends.” Factors include the nutrients already in your soil, the time of year, the weather, the […]
One day earlier this month while down on my knees doing battle with the oxalis, it occurred to me that a lot can go wrong in a gardener’s weed-fighting efforts. A lot can go wrong anywhere in the garden, for that matter. But narrowing it down to weeds, it’s easy to get overwhelmed […]
I’m beginning to think that maybe nature has banned me from the blueberry list. At my previous place in Cumberland County, I harvested quarts of tasty berries every summer from five blueberry bushes I planted along my western backyard border. The main thing I learned was to drape and secure a sturdy […]
I’ve long suspected that deer have some sort of sophisticated, yard-monitoring network that lets them take maximum advantage of the plants that gardeners set out. Now I’m sure. There’s just too much efficiency going on to assume that simple-minded deer happen to wander by and find certain target plants for dinner almost […]
Gardeners are prone to all sorts of medical and psychological afflictions not faced by the “normal” population. Maybe it’s the price we pay to conquer the many threats and curveballs involved in getting things to grow. I thought I’d go over nine of these maladies that aren’t even well known in the […]
I liked the new streamlined layout of the 2022 Philadelphia Flower Show, which ended Sunday after being held outside for only the second time in its 194-year history. I also thought the display gardens were a cut above the 2021 ones, and I liked the spread-out conditions of FDR park’s 15-acre venue over […]
A fair number of south-central Pennsylvania homes have little to no landscaping. A majority have passable to middling plantings – enough to “fit in” or at least avoid being neighborhood embarrassments. Then there are the glorious few where the ambitious owners were bit by the plant bug and ended up building truly […]
I’ve always had doubts about meadows. Proponents of this buckshot-planted, multi-species idea tout meadows as an exceptionally low-care way to cover a lot of ground colorfully while being friendly to pollinators and the ecosystem. The cynical side of me pushes the too-good-to-be-true button and wonders whether weeds will be the ultimate winner. […]