This is the time of the season when tomato plants start showing signs of disease infections, usually as different shapes and colors of spots depending on which particular disease has infected the plant. Earlier this week I took an informal survey of several varieties of tomatoes to see how each variety is holding up under … Continue Reading →
If you ever grew roses, you probably have seen those ugly, slug-like rose sawfly larvae eating leaves on your roses, or at least the damage they do. That’s the way we usually see them, as larvae. Rarely are the adult insects ever seen by gardeners. Rose slugs feed on one side or the other of … Continue Reading →
A couple of gardeners I know asked me why their cucumbers didn’t come up this year. Others have mentioned that their beans didn’t come up either. Was there something wrong with the seeds this year? After inspecting a few gardens, it became apparent to me what was going on. In each case, there was a … Continue Reading →
I have an area in the garden that I will not be able to plant this year. Instead of letting it stay fallow and grow weeds, I planted buckwheat. It’s something I’ve done through the years whenever I’ve been unable to use an area for one reason or another. Buckwheat is a fast-growing plant that … Continue Reading →
I saw my first Monarch butterfly a couple of days ago. I know they were here much earlier because I found a caterpillar on my milkweed plants. That means there had to be a female butterfly around a while ago. It takes around four days for a monarch egg to hatch. The caterpillar stage lasts … Continue Reading →
Although the temperatures were fine during mid-May, some untimely rain and prior commitments caused me to fall behind in the garden. Memorial Day weekend was when I was supposed to get caught up but a late season bout with the flu keep me off my feet all holiday weekend and into the next week. Now … Continue Reading →
The rye cover crop I planted last fall made tremendous growth this spring and now it’s time to till it into the soil. Timing is important when it comes to tilling under a cover crop like rye. The plants grew and entered the “boot stage” of growth, forming flower/seed heads inside the stalk. This is … Continue Reading →
The Matthaei Botanical Gardens – Nichols Arboretum annual Mother’s Day Plant Sale is coming up this weekend, May 13 and 14. About three weeks ago I visited the Gardens and got a sneak peek at the plants growing in the greenhouse. I can tell you that these are no ordinary, anonymous plants grown by an impersonal … Continue Reading →
This is another episode in the grape vine cutting story that began last spring. At that time I took some pieces of grapevine that I cut off the vines during pruning and used them to start new grapevines. You can browse through my older blog posts to find out about those grapes. I stuck the … Continue Reading →
Our strawberry plants were delivered this past weekend, and I got them into the ground as soon as I could. After a long ride through the postal system, they were glad to be back into the fresh air and tucked into our new strawberry bed. Beginning gardeners may not know that nearly all strawberries are … Continue Reading →
