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Cleaning your bird houses is essential for good bird health and safety. Dirty bird houses can harbor rodents, insects, feather mites, fungus and bacteria that can spread disease to the birds. Ideally, a bird house should be cleaned after all babies have grown and left the home. Remove all old nesting material and scrape out any feces or clumped matter. This material should be disposed of in a plastic bag to prevent spreading any parasites it might harbor. Scrub the …
How would you like to turn your kitchen scraps into amazing nutrient rich soil that surpasses anything you can buy from a store? It’s pretty simple and easy if you use worm power. That’s right – I said worms! Worm composting (Vermicomposting) is a clean and odorless way to transform food waste into a rich fertilizer. Not only can these red wigglers create the most nutrient rich soil, they will also help you reduce the trash you produce and keep things out …
It’s Good for Your Plants Dividing perennials is an easy, inexpensive, reliable way to propagate you favorite plants. In fact, lots of varieties of perennials benefit from division, resulting in several young, actively growing and blooming plants out of an overgrown clump. It’s a good idea to spend a little time before you start the task and decide where the divisions are going. Take advantage of the opportunity to amend the soil before you plant you divisions. Can any perennial …
I would like to share a few tips I have learned along the way as well as some products I strongly recommend for growing good, healthy roses. Gardening Tips: When I am in the growing season I keep a garden calendar. I keep a record of fertilizing, spraying and watering. When I do my spring pruning around tax time, I use Elmer’s wood glue to seal the end of the canes to prevent cane borers. I add some food coloring …
There are literally hundreds of types of roses that you can grow in your garden. With such a selection to choose from, it can be extremely difficult to choose the rose that’s right for you. The best thing to do is to prioritize what is most important to you. For some people, color is a top priority. For others, it is the variety of the rose. While for me, I choose my roses by fragrance. I love a great smelling …
With the coming of warmer weather, I’m sure that you are looking forward to getting back into your roses. I, for one, am chomping at the bit. If you love roses, there’s a very good chance that their fragrance is one of your favorite things about them. I know that is very true for me, so I thought you might be interested in a brief history about the fragrance in roses. David Austin® roses have been crossed with several types …
Pansies have been in fashion since Victorians thought them to be the flowers of lovers, and have been a popular ingredient in “love potions”. It has been told that pansies could transfer the thoughts of sweethearts without a single word being spoken. Pansies have been present in the writings of many authors, including D. H. Lawrence, Hawthorne, Wordsworth, and Shakespeare. Pansies remain one of our most popular spring flowers. They are carried home by gardeners to perk up otherwise dull spring …
Pruning roses is intimidating to many gardeners, but is actually very good for the plants. The first step is to sharpen your pruners. This will help make your efforts faster and easier. Once sharpened, you should sanitize them by dipping your pruners in a mild bleach solution to kill any fungus or bacteria. Mix about 1/4 cup of bleach per gallon of water. Roses should typically be pruned when the Forsythia blooms or tax time (April 15th) if the Forsythia blooms …
With beautiful bell-shaped flowers, Columbine is an excellent garden perennial with many colorful hybrid varieties to choose from. Its distinctive, bell-shaped, spurred flowers, bloom from mid-spring to early summer. Columbine self-seeds prolifically giving you many volunteer seedlings. With a wide choice of hybrid varieties, colors range from light pastels to bright yellow, red, orange and purple selections. The plant’s foliage has an attractive lacy appearance. Intricate little flowers, they are most commonly a combination of red, peach, and yellow but …
Wave® Petunias are perfect for your summer gardens. The abundant blooms will flower continuously all summer long in full sun. Wave® Petunias create a ground-hugging carpet of color and are perfect for flower beds, hanging baskets, containers and window boxes. Plant the Wave® Petunias 12in. apart in planting beds and watch them spread up to 4 ft! These easy-to-maintain plants are ‘self-cleaning’ meaning there is no need for you to cut back or ‘dead-head’ the spent blooms. They will simply drop old blooms …
