In the Garden: Tips for May
May is coming and most of your cleanup work should now be done! Congratulations on making it through the spring work, but there is always more to do, yes? YES I have a bundle of things to do in the potager and I am sure you do as well. I am so ready to plant […]
Bring More Golden into the Garden
After listening to a podcast with gardener Margaret Roach, in upstate New York, I realized that just do not have enough golden in my garden. I have always known I need more of it, at the back of my mind, nearly subconsciously. For when walking through my Entry Garden, I notice the Citronelle Coral Bells […]
The Kansas Gardener’s Garden: October through December
I hope you had a Merry Christmas! This is the final installment on 2019 on the series of photos from my yard. Great things are coming in 2020, I hope you are ready for them! The above flowers were all blooming in October and November. There are also some insects that were late […]
Creating Homemade Holiday Decor
Christmas is right around the corner and my wife is already starting to get the boxes of Christmas decorations from the garage. With just 2 weeks until Thanksgiving, I am beginning to gather materials for our annual Holiday Creations – setting up outdoor décor for businesses and some homeowners. I try to use primarily locally […]
April Gardening Tips
Tips and Tricks to Make Your Year Great – April Apply and water in pre-emergent herbicide on turf Apply pre-emergent herbicide granules to rocked landscape beds Divide hostas, daylilies, sedum, phlox, coreopsis, daisies, and red hot poker and share with your gardening friends! (Tip: Iris should be divided in July; peonies should be done in […]
Finding Your Secret Garden
One of my all-time favorite books (after the Bible), is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This story enlivens my spirit in the winter, awakening my soul to the gloriousness of the coming spring. While it may be possible for one to create a garden hidden away from others behind walls of brick, wood, […]
Year in Review: Insect Pests
2018 was quite the year for insect pests. We saw a huge increase in Japanese beetle numbers, as well as a large population of grasshoppers. Lets discuss these and other insects seen this year. While my viewing area is limited to Northeast Kansas and Southeast Nebraska, this seems to be a hotbed for insect […]
Winter Evergreen Maintenance
This week I went to an old landscape along the Missouri River. It was filled with evergreens. Old, mature dwarf Alberta spruces, boxwood hedges, screens of arborvitae, and the occasional holly filled the landscape with green color year round. I was there to consult on the landscape-many of the evergreens had issues. I saw fungal […]
Plant Showcase: Deciduous Conifers for the Central Great Plains
What is a conifer? A conifer is defined as a plant that produces naked seeds in cones or single naked seeds. We think of conifers with cones as pine, spruce, fir, juniper, yew, and arborvitae, but there are four deciduous conifers that we can grow in our region. An evergreen that loses its leaves, you […]
