Planning a Spring Garden Planning a spring garden is a great way to help you get through the dreary winter months. It may be too cold to start gardening, but there are still quite a few things you can do to make your life easier in the early spring. Before you start planning there are Read More »
For the past few years, Long Island has had relatively mild winter weather. While some people enjoy warmer weather in the middle of winter, for plants the fickleness of mother nature can be extremely confusing. During the cool season of fall, plants begin to enter dormancy. They are, for all intents and purposes, asleep. They Read More »
Ornamental grasses are one of the first plants to greet us come spring. You’ll see little green shoots coming up from the cut-off crowns and know that spring is finally really here. Decorative grasses can be warm season, cool season, or evergreen grasses. Warm season and cool season grasses are sometimes called “deciduous grasses”, meaning Read More »
Strawberries are one of the more hardy fruits you can plant; but they still benefit from winterizing if you want to be sure of a full crop come spring, especially if you are living in zones below zone 7. If you live in zones 8 and higher they will often not need any help at Read More »
Every year as fall rolls on you start thinking about winter. More specifically, you start thinking about your plants in winter. While some plants are easy because you can just bring them inside, the plants outside your home are a little more tricky. So how can you prepare your outside plants for winter? The first Read More »
You’ve spent the day out east pumpkin picking and you’ve found THE perfect pumpkin for Halloween (or pumpkins!). Hopefully, you’ve started with a firm pumpkin. Any soft spots will quickly develop into rot, so be aware of that while picking out your pumpkin. Now, how can you keep them lasting through Thanksgiving and beyond? The Read More »
Mums are one of the most popular flowers you’ll see this time of year. Hardy mums are carried at almost every box store and farm stand and even supermarkets. Keeping garden mums helps to fill in empty spots left after the growing season has ended and most other flowers have wilted. Along with pansies and Read More »
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 »
