Horticulture

Winter is bare root season, which is the best time for installation of deciduous fruit trees. It is also the best time for dormant pruning of deciduous fruit trees. Evergreen fruit trees do not get much attention. Installation and any pruning of evergreen fruit...

Maya Angelou likely enjoyed gardening. She said, “In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” That is how the healthiest of ecosystems, including home gardens, function. Vegetable gardens are generally diverse. However, each group of a particular vegetable is rather homogenous. Crop rotation...

Seed is the most familiar source of much of the vegetation that inhabits home gardens. It is the origin of almost all vegetables and most annual flowers. Some seed grows directly into its gardens. Some grows in nurseries to become saleable young plants. Seed...

Warm season vegetables will be productive until autumn. Several will produce until frost. Those that grew slowly during mild weather through last spring are performing well now. Summer does not end until later in September, while summery weather may not end until a bit...

This is extreme dormant pruning. Pollard and coppice pruning involve complete removal of all new growth. They typically involve growth from a previous season annually. A two-year cycle involves growth from two previous seasons, and so on. This repetitive pruning to the same origins...

The weather this year has been a cold hot mess! Both the worst frost since 1990 and the worst storms since 1982 occurred in one winter. Then, cold wintry weather lingered into spring to inhibit spring bloom. Now, cool and mild weather of spring...

Spring bloom is the most colorful color in the garden here. It is not the only color, though. Some deciduous foliage will provide color at the opposite end of the year. Bark can add a bit of color, particularly while deciduous trees defoliate for...

Some of the earliest of spring flowers are done blooming. More are just beginning. Then, a few early spring flowers barely qualify as early. Their fresh color is especially pleasing after such an atypically wintry winter. Many are delightful cut flowers. A few that...

Halloween seems to be an appropriate time to bury early spring bulbs in shallow graves. The season begins about now, and continues until about the end of the year. Installation of new bulbs might initially be ungratifying. There is nothing to show after their...

Spring is when most rodents are most active. Although they do not hibernate locally, they are a bit less active through winter.  Their activity increases with warming spring weather. Their progeny increases their population. Assorted fresh vegetation that sustains them is most abundant. Their activity...