Along with your New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, get more exercise, get organized, quit smoking, or whatever else is on your list, consider adding some gardening resolutions. The best part is you don’t even have to think about them for a few months yet! Resolve to cut down or eliminate the use of synthetic [Continue]
Before you brought your Christmas tree home, it lived 8–12 years in the field, depending on its size and species. Someone put a lot of time and effort into planting, watering, fertilizing and pruning that tree. And let’s face it – when that tree was cut, it was killed. It will be prettily decorated for [Continue]
I was going to start out with “I don’t mean to scare you . . .” but I really do intend to scare you. Do you buy bulk or bagged compost, topsoil, mulch or hay? Do you get compost or mulch free from your city or town? Either way, you may be getting more than [Continue]
Each year I keep a running list of how I’ll make my garden better the following year. This is an invaluable tool – no matter how good your memory, winter has a way of erasing from our minds all those good garden-related plans. I’ll share with you some of the notes I’ve made for next [Continue]
Okay, so you know you should have a first aid kit – a good one, not a cheapie one – with you when you’re in the field or forest or on the water, right? But what if it’s in your buddy’s car, back at the cabin, or even on the counter at home right next [Continue]
Some prescriptions come with a warning that you should stay out of the sun while taking the medication because the drug makes you more sensitive to sunburn. This is called photosensitivity or phototoxicity. There are plants in the wild and even in your own garden that you may inadvertently touch that do the same thing. [Continue]
A couple years ago I won an oxalis plant as a door prize at a Master Gardener meeting. I removed it from the plastic pot it came in, put it in a pretty ceramic pot and placed it in my dining room near the window. For those not familiar with the plant, oxalis is sometimes [Continue]
Native plants are those that were growing in a particular area prior to European settlement. Wisconsin has a wide variety of native plants because of our diverse landscape of prairies, woodlands and savannas. Native plants aren’t just for people that have acreage to devote to restoring prairies! There are many reasons to consider using [Continue]
For the past few years, the leaves on the tips of the stems of my rose bush have leafed out a much lighter green than the leaves on the lower parts of the stems. The veins of the leaves remain dark green though. Soon those leaves top leaves turn yellow and then the edges get [Continue]
Spend your gardening time and money wisely George Washington said “Bad seed is robbery of the worst kind, for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.” He makes a good point. Often you’ll find that those ten-packs-for-a-dollar seeds don’t germinate very well and [Continue]