With the fall weather here your family is likely to spend a lot of time outdoors. It’s still warm enough to barbecue and the kids love jumping in piles of leaves. What you don’t want to happen is for them to become victims of tick bites. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Read More »
You hear something buzzing by and catch a black and yellow streak out of the corner of your eye. Quick! Was it a bee or a wasp? And what’s the difference anyway? While you certainly wouldn’t mistake an inch long bumble bee or a carpenter bee for a common wasp, wasps and honeybees can sometimes Read More »
One of the most welcome sights in the garden is when a butterfly comes to visit. When a whole swarm of them comes, it’s like magic. So how can you be sure to get more of these lovely visitors? By planting a butterfly garden! A butterfly garden, or pollinator garden, is planted specifically to lure Read More »
If you’ve grown squash plants in your home gardens, be they pumpkins, zucchini, or butternut squash, you may have dealt with squash borers and not even known it. Have your plants ever wilted seemingly overnight? Have you seen big, mushy holes in the plant stems? That’s a sure sign that you have squash borers. Here Read More »
We’re just about in the middle of summer and that means that some of your vegetables are ready to harvest while others still have a while to go. But how do you know exactly when harvest time is? First: the time of day. Early in the morning is the best time to harvest vegetables. Vegetables Read More »
We’re officially into the summer heat and the dog days are on their way. So what can you do to keep your lawn as green as possible? These lawn care tips will tell you how to water your lawn to keep it healthy and happy all the way through into the fall. The amount of Read More »
Summer is here and that means spending a lot more time outside. Unfortunately, part of that time outside often includes bug bites, particularly mosquito bites. The Centers for Disease Control list mosquitoes as spreading a number of diseases from EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitis), and Yellow fever to Zika virus and even—in other parts of the Read More »
There are a lot of reasons to plant native species when doing your outdoor plantings for both you and the wildlife around you. A native plant requires fewer fertilizers and pesticides than a non-native plant, which is great for the environment and for our local pollinators. Native plants are also already suitable for our fluctuating Read More »
Summer pruning of fruit trees is done both to increase next year’s crop and improve this year’s harvest. Most of the time pruning is done in winter when a tree is dormant, so pruning during the growing season may seem counterintuitive, but there are a few reasons to prune during this time of year. Apples, Read More »
As you look outside at your dormant lawn it’s hard to believe that in just a few weeks the pesky weeds will arrive. When the weather warms and plants wake up the weeds in your lawn wake up too. What most people don’t realize is that one of the best times for weed control is Read More »