The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Bibs On!
Clay soil can be black or red, is as fine as dust, and is hard for plants to move through. Clay soil is waterlogged in wet months and rock hard in summer. If water does reach a plant’s roots, the plant will drown because water can’t escape. This is called root rot. Clay soil does… Click here to read more…
Some gardeners have fertile malleable soil in their backyards, and many have clay in their backyards. Does having a clay based soil damper any future hopes of a garden. No! absolutely not. How to plant in clay soil; well, that takes patience and work. Planting in clay soil is great for the vegetation that have roots strong… Click here to read more…
Raised Beds and Potting Soil. The Recipe is the Magic that makes for Beautiful Plants! A good potting soil recipe and a good bed building recipe are interchangeable. A good potting soil recipe is an absolute must. You can’t fool around and get a potting soil recipe wrong. I poor potting soil recipe will stall,… Click here to read more…
When to Amend Garden Soil and When Not to. The two types of garden soil that really need to be amended the most are clay soil and sandy soil. Clay needs to be amended to loosen it up. The roots of plants need to have the ability to transfer oxygen through the soil to the… Click here to read more…
This is the time of year when people are buying topsoil for their landscaping and gardening projects. Topsoil varies depending on where you live, but essentially, with a good top soil, it shouldn’t have to be screened. With the screening process clay based soil gets run through a screener and a shaker which makes the… Click here to read more…
The damage you see in the above photo is called Vertcillium Wilt. Verticillium wilt attacks all kinds of plants, usually with devastating results. I’ve had it attack at least three if not four of my pretty mature Japanese maples. Verticillium Wilt is a soil borne, fungal type of disease that affects the plants ability to… Click here to read more…
A Tiller/Cultivator this is cordless? Yep! Mantis has done it again. I need to tell you this. I own and have owned for many years a Mantis 2-cycle Tiller/Cultivator and I love it. I use it for all kinds of things. But . . . it’s 2-cycle. That’s fine by me because I keep 2-cycle… Click here to read more…
Creeping Phlox is easy to grow, easy to propagate and sells like crazy! We potted the phlox in this pot last summer and they over wintered perfectly and bloomed like crazy this spring. Creeping Phlox can be propagated in the early spring via division, simply dig up a clump and separate the roots into small… Click here to read more…
I, Mike McGroarty, am committed to turning you into a successful Backyard Grower. This post is all about you and your success. There truly are handful to things that you need to get started and be successful as soon as possible. One of those tools is education. I work really hard to bring you as… Click here to read more…
Christmas in August? Believe it or not, now is the time to work with your holiday plants such as poinsettias, amaryllis and Christmas cactus to prepare them to be in full bloom during the holidays. Christmas Cactus and Amaryllis are two of the more popular indoor plants in the United States. They both have excellent… Click here to read more…
How to Propagate Mums Chrysanthemums refer to a genus of flowering plants with great genetic diversity. The Chrysanthemum was widely grown in China during the 15th century B.C. as a flowering herb. Stories recount that the boiled roots were used as a headache remedy, the leaves were used as a drink in festivities, and the… Click here to read more…
Edible landscape plants are quickly becoming the hottest thing in gardening. We are seeing a real trend with homeowners who are moving away from the traditional ornamental landscaping and opting for plants that provide food as well as beauty. Blueberry bushes, with their antioxidant-rich berries and spectacular fall foliage, are becoming one of the most… Click here to read more…
Transplanting a Japanese maple is not difficult, but there are a few key things to know to prevent doing serious harm to your tree. The two most important factors in successfully transplanting Japanese maple trees are depth and timing. If you can at all help it, only dig your Japanese maple when it is dormant…. Click here to read more…
Mike’s Plant Farm4850 North Ridge RoadPerry, Ohio 44081 It doesn’t matter whether you are installing a new lawn at a new house, replacing an old lawn at an existing home, or rejuvenating the lawn that you have, you have options of how the grass seed is applied or whether or not it makes more sense… Click here to read more…
Do you have a fruit tree or trees in your yard that just don’t seem to know how to make fruit? Are you frustrated with your fruit trees and their lack of adequate fruit production? I know it can be frustrating, but here’s the deal… Fruit trees are programed at birth to be robotic fruit-producing… Click here to read more…
Techny Arborvitae, also known as Mission Arborvitae Thuja occidentalis ‘Techny’ This by far my favorite Arborvitae! It has a beautiful dark green color, it grows very dense, it’s a medium fast grower. Some say it’s a slow grower and compared to a lot of other Arborvitae it is slower growing. However, you will hear me… Click here to read more…
A couple of years ago I posted a video and some photos of the landscaping around our house and one guy said something like, “It’s a good thing you know how to grow plants because your landscape design skills are terrible. So when I did an update I titled the post, “My Landscape Design Skills… Click here to read more…
Mountain Fire Piers Japonica is a broad leaf evergreen. This particular variety is famous for the fire red new growth that comes out in the spring, thus the name. Piers Japonica can grow quiet tall, as tall as 8′, they are relatively slow growing and can easily kept to a more manageable size of about… Click here to read more…
Preparing a new lawn for grass seed is a bit of work, but it’s not that difficult to do successfully if you are armed with just a bit of basic information. A few basics that you must get right… Pam and I recently built a new house, you know, all one floor, no steps. I… Click here to read more…
I’ve been growing the perennial Tricolor Sedum for a couple years now. This plant makes a great border plant. It has green and white variegated leaves and a delicate pink flower that blooms in the summer. The white edges on the fleshy leaves can take on a pink-bluish color in cooler weather. It will grow… Click here to read more…
