How to Map and Plan a New Garden

The cusp of the New Year is not prime gardening season in much of the United States. But, it’s often an excellent time to map and design a new garden or planting border, even in areas that experience real winter. All that is required are bare ground, a relatively mild day, and a few common household items.

Start by considering the garden’s location, size, shape, and desired plants and […]

How To Grow Star Fruit Indoors

Dwarf star fruit trees can start producing when they are only 18 inches high. (Image by Wiki Nursery)

Looking for an easy-to-grow fruit that will bring light and sparkle to your gardening life during the darkest months of the year? Tasty, tropical star fruits (Averrhoa carambola) may be the answer, even if you live in a cold-winter climate. Dwarf trees have made indoor growing possible.

Angular star fruits are succulent […]

Garden Journaling: How To Plan Your Dream Garden

A journal is one of the best tools for achieving the garden of your
dreams. Your recorded observations of what’s happening today will give you a clearer
vision of what to do tomorrow – and many years beyond.

Starting Your Garden Journal

A note pad, smartphone, and/or computer are all you need to build your journal. Use them to record the dates and details of significant garden happenings, such as the following […]

Plum Yew and Japanese Holly: Better Shrubs for Shearing

Some garden settings are just made for the stylized, symmetrical look of sheared shrubs. Likewise, some shrub species take especially well to being sheared into dense, geometrical shapes

An essential ingredient of formal Japanese gardens, French parterres, English hedges, and other stylized landscape features, sheared shrubs excel at providing structure or at balancing other architectural elements (such as pillared entryways and granite walls). To fill this bill requires a […]

Growing Tropical Fruits Indoors

Dwarf Cavendish bananas and calamondins and are super tropical fruits for indoor growing.

Growing tropical fruits in Toledo (or Toronto or Trenton) may seem like the stuff of fantasy. It’s perfectly doable, though, thanks to the numerous dwarf tropical fruit trees that take well to containers and flower and fruit at a young age. A warm sunny outdoor location in summer, an equally sunny indoor niche in […]

Growing Winter Pears

Many of the finest pears (Pyrus communis) for growing and eating are harvested to perfection in the winter months. Their fruits become juicy, even buttery, when fully ripe. By late fall, they should start showing up at orchard stands and farmers markets for fresh eating and cooking, but homegrown fruits are even better, if you have the time and yard space.

Like most popular tree fruits, such as cherries, […]

Managing the Five Most Common Apple Diseases

Don’t be afraid to grow your own apples. Sure, most varieties are rife with disease problems, but there are varietal exceptions, and smaller trees make management easier. Choosing disease-resistant apples and understanding care requirements will make for a reliably healthy harvest. Aspiring orchardists need not be discouraged.

Before and after steps can be taken to ward […]

10 Worst Garden Weeds and Their Management

Burdock is a very difficult weed that pops up along yard perimeters and in gardens.

What makes a garden weed the worst? Four attributes make weeds very difficult to manage. These are 1) deep perennial roots, 2) re-sprouting roots, 3) lots of fast-to-germinate seeds, and 4) fast robust growth. Then you have the added bonus of weed nasties that are toxic and prickly. These are the weeds that take […]

Give Your Garden an Edge With Resilience®!

Sun Gro® Horticulture is proud of its exclusive potting mix additive, RESiLIENCE®, our trade name for horticultural silicon (Si), a beneficial plant substance. RESiLIENCE® is an all-natural, water-soluble mineral that is included as an ingredient in many Black Gold® mixes. RESiLIENCE®-enhanced growing mixes are enriched with beneficial silicon—a technology developed by the company’s own research horticulturists. Potting mixes fortified with RESiLIENCE® could offer gardeners real growing benefits.

Numerous trials have shown that plants grown in RESiLIENCE®-enhanced mixes […]

Vegetable Companion Plants that Repel Insect Pests

Vegetable gardens with a good mix of companion plants can perform better.

Some attractive and useful companion plants really do help ward off certain insect pests from specific crops. Plant these companions in quantity, and they can serve to reduce the populations of common insect pests of vegetables.

Research has shown that some companion plantings reduce the number of insect pests that attack vegetable crops. Some companion plants are trap […]