Missing the sound of running water from a stream in your backyard. Don’t have enough room for a little stream, try a garden fountain. You can buy a kit or make your own. All you need is a basin to…
Garden Fountain
Category: Gardening & Landscape
Fall Webworms
What is that big bunches of webs in my trees? It is fall webworms hatching from eggs and spinning a protection web over the colony. While unsightly, they do not cause much harm this time of the year as the…
Flies in the House
Flies and more flies in the house, I am getting sick of it! They say find the source and remove it, the source is the farm! So I need to kill them in the house. The best method I have…
Picnic Beetles
Have you ever found little black beetles with yellow spots on your overripe garden fruit? These little buggers are called picnic beetles and are instantly attracted to your ripening sweet corn, berries, cracking melons, and tomatoes. They burrow into the…
Melons and Tomatoes seem to Crack
Why do melons and tomatoes seem to crack when the fruit gets ripe? The cause is inconsistent soil water and heat. Do not let the soil dry completely then water. The surge of water in the fruit will expand causing…
Datura Flowers
Datura flowers open up at night-blooming on rounded plants up to 3 feet tall. Newer varieties come in a variety of flower and leaf foliage. Other names of the non-cultivated variety are Angel Trumpet, devil trumpet, and jimsonweed (which is…
Four o’clock the Flower
Want to grow a flower that has about every color of the rainbow in its bloom? Try four o’clocks, a shrubby like annuals which bloom in mid-summer till frost. Four o’clocks get their name from the time of day that…
Cedar Apple Rust
Remember those orange spider-looking galls on your junipers early this spring? Now there are brown to orange spots on your apple leaves and fruit. This is cedar-apple rust. The spring galls released spores into the air affecting apple trees. Later…
Powdery Mildew in Gardens
Powder mildew is showing up in gardens and flower beds earlier this year. It used to not have been a major problem years ago. As our summers get more humid, this fungus is now common. It starts out as a…
Vintage Lawn Sprinklers
There is a group of people collecting vintage lawn sprinklers. Surprisingly, there are many designs of old water sprinklers. Lawn and garden sprinklers have not changed over the years much. The vintage ones were most likely made of cast iron…
Snow on the Mountain
Snow on the Mountain is a native weedy plant found around in pastures in the area. Belonging to the family of Euphorbias, which are a family of succulents. This means they are drought tolerant and need full sun. Like its…
When are Onions Ready
When are onions ready to pull and store? Rule of thumb is when 2/3 of the tops have fallen over. You can bend over the rest of the crop. Also, stop watering. Leave the onions in the ground for a…
Blossom End Rot in Tomatoes
Blossom end rot in tomatoes shows up a browning or blackening areas on the bottom of the fruit. It is more common than not on the first ripening tomatoes. Pepper and eggplant also get this condition, but to a lesser…
Leaf Miner Injury
This week I am hearing about leaf miner injury in various plants. You look at the leaf and see tunnels winding around between the tissues of the leaf. I have not seen heavy infestations that skeletonize the plant, however, they…
Cleome Plants
Cleome plants are not too popular anymore and I do not know why. They are hard to start indoors but come up readily in the garden if you allow the seeds to drop. Once the flower spike opens up, cleomes…