The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Bibs On!
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…
Why would you need an underground root cellar? An underground root cellar can provide you a place to store plants, or plant bulbs, anything that you want to protect from freezing. I build mine to store rare Japanese maples that I’d get shipped in during the winter months but couldn’t plant out until spring. One… Click here to read more…
This is a confusing topic and a great deal of mis-information is out there about organic weed control. So let’s start with the basics. Weeds typically show up in your yard because by any number of means weed seed ended up in your yard. Maybe birds, mostly the wind. Weed seeds need just a few… 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 get this question a lot . . . “Mike, how in the world do you get rid of Yucca?” Yucca have roots that go really deep into the ground so when you dig them out it’s unlikely that you are going to get all of the roots and new plants will sprout up from… Click here to read more…
Some growers stratify seeds like dogwoods or Japanese maple seeds in a cold, but not freezing space. Some actually put them in a cloth bag and hang them in the well, far above the water level but at least a few feet down because the air in the well is never cold enough to freeze…. Click here to read more…
I was sitting out on the front porch admiring the Impatiens that Pam and I planted. What a blast of color! Then I thought about what I feed them. Before I get into that, let’s do a fertilizer crash course. On a bag of fertilizer you will see three numbers like 12-12-12 or 18-6-4 or… Click here to read more…
My neighbor Richard is awesome and he let me use his garden for this presentation. Last fall I helped Richard pack his garden with donkey manure and other compost from my compost pile. We put at least two or three ton of manure and compost into his garden. Then I tilled it in with the… Click here to read more…
People are always perplexed at what to put in their landscape. How many? How should I arrange them etc. Pam and I decided to dress up the front of this place, but we wanted to keep it really, really simple. This is what we did . . . The design on both sides of the… Click here to read more…
I’ve always had a difficult time over wintering ornamental grasses in containers so last fall I decided to try something different. We pulled the grasses out of the pots and heeled them in an above ground, but not really raised bed. Then we mulched around them with potting soil to make the roots were not… Click here to read more…
Ornamental grasses can be really challenging to over winter in pots. If you cover the pots with white plastic like I show here that helps a great deal because it keeps them dry so they don’t rot. But uncovered, they don’t do well in pots over the winter here in the north. So this year… Click here to read more…
If you have a place or places in your yard that have standing water and I know a lot of people do, there are ways to make that water disappear and in this post and video I’m going to explain how you can go about that. Filling with Topsoil Seldom Works. Typically people try and… Click here to read more…
I made you a movie about trimming shrubs. Enjoy! When pruning shrubs in your landscape it’s important to understand a few things. It really makes no difference when you prune most plants. The plants flat out don’t care and the sooner you prune them, if they need it, the sooner they can be on their… Click here to read more…
Here’s a quick lesson on how to easily prune Tango Weigela and other flowering shrubs. I’ve also included a crash-course on how to make softwood cuttings. People All Over the Country Are Getting Paid to Grow Plants Right In Their Own Backyards! It’s Easy to Get Started… Here’s How… The video below shows how nicely… Click here to read more…
Golden Curls Willow is a very attractive plant with branches that twist and turn like a pigs tail, but they can get big. One of Our Members, Roger Higgins from Roger’s Backyard Nursery in Cranesville, Pa has a very unusual approach to growing and selling this tree. A late friend of mine discovered and brought… Click here to read more…
Written by Ruth Harrigan – Urban Beekeeper & Gardener As civilization continues to encroach on wild habitats it is now more imperative than ever for gardeners like us to lend a hand to all the pollinators who need a variety of flowers as a source of nectar and pollen. An oasis can be easily created… Click here to read more…
Trees and plants are no different than any other creature on the planet. If you want them to be nice, to act right, you have to train them when they are young. With conical evergreens like Spruce trees, pine tree and upright arborviate it’s important to train them when really young to produce only one… Click here to read more…
Recently Duston and I traveled to Roger’s Backyard Nursery in Cranesville, Pa, only about a 37 mile drive for us and took a tour of Roger’s Backyard Nursery. Roger is One of Our Members. He showed us why he is successful over winter ornamental grasses when others are not. In the photo you can see… Click here to read more…
Single digits here in Ohio this week! Brrrrrr. Both the plants and the Donkeys are Doing Fine. The donkeys stay in their little shelter house during the day, it’s pretty open but it keeps the wind off of them. Then at nighttime they check into Their Little Semi Underground Bedroom. The plants? The plants are… Click here to read more…
Over the years I’ve landscape somewhere between 500 and 1,000 homes. I’ve done everything from simple, basic landscapes to extravagant landscapes for very expensive homes. Over the years I adopted a basic landscape design that I could apply to just about any house and actually repeat that scheme on different sides of the same house… Click here to read more…
