There are many places to find comprehensive lists of both native and invasive Wisconsin plants. Ideally, plants would stay put on their own lists and not cross over. However, every gardener knows that plants don’t always behave the way we hope and expect they will. Given the right conditions, once in a while some [Continue]
There is a nice mixture of lily pad-like leaves floating off the end of my dock – huge round serving platter-sized lotus leaves, the smaller dinner plate-sized split leaves of water lilies and the split ovals of spatterdock. One I hope never to see in the mix was discovered for the first time in [Continue]
Last week I gave up on brussels sprouts for this year and chopped them all down. The green cabbage worms won. I had been diligently checking every leaf every day and squishing – ugh! -the worms, which are actually caterpillars, but I then missed two days and things got completely out of control. The [Continue]
Wild grapes are the most plentiful free fruit in North America. Their vines grow prolifically in most of the United States except for the southwest and extreme southeast. The strange thing is that they are mostly unnoticed until they become a problem – for example when they are about to strangle and pull down [Continue]
My husband and I lost most of our chicken flock to an unknown predator in one night of terror last summer. After a little research, we decided to replace them with Easter Egger chickens. Easter Eggers’ eggs range in color from blue to green to pink, coming right out of the chicken looking like [Continue]
I would bet that 95% of property owners reading this have one or more plant species on their property that violates NR40, the Wisconsin DNR’s invasive species rule. Some of you know that you do. Perhaps you’ve got a woodland where invasive buckthorn or garlic mustard is past any chance of control. Or [Continue]
Once upon a time, long ago in a land far away, a beautiful purple-flowered plant bloomed every summer. It attracted bees and other pollinators and was used for medicine and to make gardens pretty. It was well-behaved in its native land, never overstepping its bounds, because a tiny beetle that wouldn’t eat anything but [Continue]
Just when you’re all ready to harvest big bunches of basil to make pesto, basil jam, a salad, a fruity basil drink or margherita pizza, you notice that your basil isn’t looking so good. What happened? Basil is generally easy to grow and has few problems, but there is a new basil disease, downy [Continue]
My husband and I bought our first boat a few years ago, a used 1979, 17-foot Steury stern drive. Neither of us had prior experience with boat ownership and we looked at several before deciding on this one. It wasn’t until the boat became ours that we realized the significance of the fact that [Continue]
Did you want to be a scientist when you grew up? No? Me neither. That’s why I majored in Business in college. I don’t know why people are expected to know what they want to do with their lives when they are still teenagers. By age 30 or so most people have a better [Continue]