I had a message from my cousin about fuzzy bumps on a houseplant followed by three other calls. Mealybugs are clever little devils, they like to hide and then come in for the sneak attack. It seems like overnight there’s…
Mealybugs on Houseplants
Category: Gardening & Landscape
Indoor plants and Winter
It may sound odd, but indoor plants need less water during the winter. While it’s true that winter air is drier, plants experience a slower rate of growth during the cold weather. Some even go completely dormant. Less water is needed to…
Growing Season Ended
The growing season ended for the flowers and vegetables, what were you pleased to see that? was surprised to see? was disappointed to see? I’ll go first. I was pleased to see my new asparagus plants grew like crazy! By…
All American Selection for Vegetables
The new All American Selection for 2020 for vegetables goes to 3 tomato varieties. 1. Celano is a patio type grape tomato with a strong bushy habit. It is best grown with some support, such as a tomato cage. This…
The Euonymus Family of Shrubs
The euonymus family of shrubs are a group of tall, medium, and low-growing shrubs with variable habits, which withstand though growing condition, making them perfect for South Dakota landscapes. The most-often used euonymus is the burning bush, and, like it,…
All-American Selections of 2020 (Perennials)
All-America Selections, North America’s oldest and most well-known non-profit plant trialing organization has announced the first winners for 2020 including two entries from the Perennial Trial. Only those entries that performed better than the comparisons are granted the AAS award…
Durian (The Smelly Fruit)
So why are grocery stores selling this? Like most controversial foods, durian is an acquired taste
I Hate Mums!
I hate mums—or more properly Chrysanthemum sp.—with a passion second only to my distaste for the new “fancy” petunias that never last through the summer. But mums are about as worthless in the garden in my estimation. Yes, they provide us some…
Putting the Garden to Bed
Gardening in the fall is a great time to look back on your garden successes and disappointments, but there’s still plenty of time left for most of us to do some last-minute garden maintenance. Fall gardening takes advantage of cooler…
Silver Lace Vine
Choosing a vine for the garden is a tricky business. The perfect vine would be one that is beautiful, easy to grow and stops at the end of the trellis. The stopping part – or perhaps more accurately failing to…
Blooming Morning Glories
It will be a jungle out there when my morning glory vines grow up! The morning glory can grow to be ten feet tall or more in a season, which made it a popular privy plant in the old days…
Alpine Strawberries
Alpine strawberries cause confusion, as sometimes they’re considered wild, and sometimes they’re not. They’re generally of the genus Fragaria vesca, which grows wild in northern Europe. They can be both red or white. If you do a search online for…
Okra plants
My okra plants are producing now! Grown from seed started indoors in April. It was first cultivated in Ethiopia. Records of its cultivation in ancient Egypt date to over 3000 years ago! In the following centuries was spread throughout Africa, the…
Marvel of Peru
Another one of my favorite flowers are blooming now: Four o’clocks or Marvel of Peru. It is an unusual plant, in that it may produce flowers of different colors on the same plant—including white, yellow, and a variety of pink,…
Scarecrows
As long as there have been farmers and gardeners, there have been birds trying to eat their crops. And throughout the ages, farmers have tried to come up with ingenious ways to scare them off. Nowadays, scarecrows are familiar sights,…