Springtime always brings with it a renewed interest in maintaining a healthy lawn. Spring is the time to prepare your lawn for the rest of the year. There are many good management practices that will help you keep a healthy lawn throughout the
season. Continue reading
Why Slow Trees?
Generally speaking, people tend to be impatient. We like fast food, we like TV on-demand, some even like instant mashed potatoes. When it comes to landscaping, we expect newly planted to trees to become big shade trees in just a year or two. And while
a few trees are rapid growers, they often come with problems that are not fully considered. Continue reading
Spring Lawn Fertility
Lawns provide great benefits in urban settings by controlling erosion, filtering runoff before it reaches our streams and groundwater, and by moderating temperatures during the hot summers. Every homeowner has their own expectations of how nice their lawn should be. Some homeowners spend considerable resources to ensure a weed free, thick, healthy lawn with multiple applications of weed control products and many opt for irrigation and consequently, annual water costs. Continue reading
Mulch, Mold, & Fungi
Mulch can be beneficial in many ways on plant beds, around foundation shrubs and
other gardening locations in your yard, but mold can threaten its benefits.
In landscape beds and gardens, mulch helps control weeds, prevent extreme soil
temperature fluctuation, decrease water evaporation and improve drainage. Mulch also
reduces mower and string trimmer damage on shrubs and trees by suppressing vegetation near their trunks. As it decomposes, mulch produces organic materials to improve soil and otherwise benefit plants. Continue reading
Forcing Cut Branches For Winter Flowers
Cut branches forced into bloom can help add sunshine to those gloomy winter days and it is not hard to coax many into flower. Branches from cherry, plum, forsythia, quince and viburnums can be forced into blooming and used in arrangements. Continue reading
Intensive Gardening
When you measure your gardening experience in decades rather than years, you’ve adopted new techniques and eliminated some old ones. Over the seasons, one of the traditions I’ve changed is the long single rows of vegetables with wide spaces between rows. Due to easier maintenance and increased yield, I’ve changed to more intensive gardening. Intensive gardening reduces wasted space to a minimum; however, it isn’t just for people who lack land resources. An intensive vegetable garden concentrates work efforts to create an ideal plant environment, giving higher yields with less labor. This idea isn’t new as “Square Foot Gardening” has advocated these ideals for decades. Don’t get the idea there isn’t still work involved, as weeding by hand or with hand tools is still required, although due to closer plant spacing fewer weeds should be present. Mulching with an organic material between plants is an integral part of the intensive system. Continue reading
Preserving Flowers
The gardening season is all but over for most of the landscape plants and flowers. Many avid gardeners who hate to see the growing season go may look for ways to keep it going by taking some of their favorite flowers indoors to keep through the winter until those warm, gardening days come around again. However, many will seek to keep their flowers around during winter months by picking those last vibrant blooms and preserving them by drying. Continue reading
Household Fall Invaders
Beetles, bugs, and flies are some of the creatures actively seeking protected overwintering sites as days get shorter and cooler. Many produce stains or unpleasant odors if crushed. Scavengers, such as carpet beetles, can be attracted to accumulations of
insects that die in attics and wall voids. Lastly, overreaction to pests may lead to excessive insecticide use indoors that can have serious consequences. Continue reading
Order Your Kentucky Tree Seedlings Now
There is a saying that the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago and the second best time is as soon as possible. If you have been thinking about a tree planting project, consider using seedlings from one of Kentucky’s state-run tree seedling nurseries. The Kentucky Division of Forestry (http://forestry.ky.gov) in addition to providing foresters to help woodland owners manage their wooded property, fighting wildfires, and inspecting timber harvest operations also maintains two tree seedling nurseries in Kentucky: one in the east (Morgan County) and one in the west (Marshall County). Continue reading
Cover Crops for Kentucky Gardens
It has been a hard year in the garden. The heat and drought left our plants looking pitiful for most of the summer. If you feel like the time has come to put the garden to bed for the season, why not plant a cover crop? Cover crops can add organic matter to the soil, reduce soil erosion, weed suppression, and help to maintain the integrity of the soil. Continue reading
Kentucky Hort News 
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