With warmer weather often comes ‘Spring Fever’. Home gardeners hit hard with this condition might often be tempted to rush to do their spring tilling when the ground is wet. Don’t make this mistake as you can potentially damage the structure of your garden soil for years to come. Continue reading
Winter Fruit Tree Care
During the winter months, home orchard owners need to protect their fruit trees from rabbits and voles. But hold off on any pruning until after the worst of the cold, winter weather has passed.
Rabbits and voles injure fruit trees by chewing the bark from the lower trunk and portions of the roots. This damage may kill or severely weaken the trees.
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Orchids Make Popular Houseplants
Orchids are becoming increasingly popular as houseplants. One orchid you are likely to encounter is the Phalaenopsis, or moth orchid. It gets its name from the shape of the flower that resembles a moth in flight.
Moth orchids thrive in medium light. A window with southern exposure is ideal. You will notice that the pot is filled with a bark-type potting mix. In nature, these plants grow on trees, so they need a potting medium that is light and well drained—regular potting soil is not appropriate. Continue reading
Time to Control Fruit Diseases
Winter is a good time to prepare fruiting crops for the season ahead. Many fruit diseases can be partially controlled by being vigilant with cleanup and fungicidal sprays at proper times. Remember that pruning should take place in late February on fruiting trees. Below is a list of fruit crops along with diseases of concern and some things to do to help you have a successful harvest. Continue reading
Winter Equipment Maintenance
Just because it is cold outside, doesn’t mean your lawn and landscape work is complete. There are many chores that can, and should be done during the winter months. Cold weather is the time to service your tools and power equipment, build a new compost bin, calibrate your sprayer, or even identify some winter annuals for proper control methods later.
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Plan Your Spring Garden Now
Each year new people get into vegetable gardening. Success or failure of home vegetable production can depend on many things, but some major reasons for failure are negligence, not following the proper instructions and not keeping up with current vegetable developments. Continue reading
The Season for Snow & Ice
Like it or not, winter brings the damaging effects of snow and ice to trees and shrubs. Wet snows are bad, but freezing rain is often worse. Ice storms typically start as warm rain falls through rapidly cooling air at ground-level. This results in rain quickly turning to ice on all exposed surfaces. Freezing rain is especially serious on evergreens and deciduous species that have not shed all their foliage.
Ice is heavy. A half inch on a power line can weigh 500 pounds. For trees this can amount to a weight increase of 30 times. Corrective pruning and replacement are the only solutions once breakage has occurred. But, are there options to prevent breakage?
Brighten Winter with Amaryllis Blooms
This time of year, amaryllis is a popular winter blooming bulb found on shelves in local flower shops and garden centers. Their large showy trumpet shaped blooms produced atop a tall flower stalk provide a nice welcome to the cold winter. Below are a few steps to ensure the biggest and brightest amaryllis blooms. Continue reading
Winter is for Witchhazel
The cold winter season is enough to keep many plants, and most gardeners, in a state of suspended animation patiently waiting for warm breezes and bright sunshine. But, among these droves of winter evaders, there is one with the fortitude to tempt ‘old man winter’ and produce not solely a plump bud or a greenish stem, but a flower with fragrance and style unlike any other blooming shrub. The plant is Witchhazel and it is the hero of a winter garden. Continue reading
Clean Up for Clean Plants
Autumn has arrived in Kentucky and, as leaves change color and fall from trees, it is time to focus on landscape sanitation. Good sanitation practices can help reduce disease-causing pathogens. These organisms can survive for months or years on dead plant material or in soil, causing infections in subsequent years. Elimination of disease-causing organisms reduces the need for chemical controls and can improve the effectiveness of disease management practices. Following these sanitation practices both in autumn and throughout the growing season can reduce disease pressure in home and commercial landscapes. Continue reading
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