Hanging baskets, they’re not just for hanging anymore. By all means, do hang them, but consider that basically, it’s a big pot full of colorful flowers or tropical foliage. You can remove the hanger, and set it on a pedestal for an instant “container” plant, or if it happens to be upright instead of trailing, you can set in on a table for a centerpiece.
Early April is still chilly (off and on, this weekend is going to be a warm one) and it still makes sense to be planting cool season vegetables and flowers. That includes broccoli, lettuce, and pansies.
If you can sit still on our first warm Saturday, and you are a hard-core plant collector who dreams about new and unusual plants, consider attending the lecture at Behnke’s at Beltsville presented by by Oregon nurseryman Sean Hogan at 10AM, sponsored by the Four Seasons Garden Club.
For vegetable gardeners, one way to make vegetable gardening cheaper is to start your own plants from seed, rather than buying pre-started plants. Depending on the plant, some seeds may be planted directly in the garden, while others are best started ahead of time in pots.
March is the month when we go from a few thousand woody plants (shrubs, trees) on hand to tens of thousands. The first trucks of new woodies are due this week, and after that it’s more or less daily shipments for the next three or four weeks. Perennials—remember, the plants that more or less die back to the ground and come back the next year if everything goes right, lag a bit behind woody plants.
Branches may have torn completely off of the plant, or may be broken but still attached. Any obviously broken branches that are still attached should be removed from the plant. They should be cut back to undamaged wood on the larger branch to which they are attached, or back to the trunk.
In spring, during the nesting season, birds feed heavily on insects. But during winter, whatever insects are around are dormant and only certain birds hunt for them. Woodpeckers and nuthatches clamber around on the trunks of trees, looking for insects (or their eggs) hiding under the bark, while wrens hunt through the logs in the woodpile.
For answers to your gardening questions, try HGIC, more properly known as the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center. The Cooperative Extension Service was born from the land grant college system, as a way for universities to…
Let’s say you just received a poinsettia as a gift, or bought a couple for decoration around the house, and you don’t know much about them. How should you take care of it. Or them.
Gardening Basics: Simply Put, Save Those Leaves! Before your rake all of the rest of the leaves to the curb, consider a compost pile. People become obsessed with composting, with bins, thermometers, turning the pile, adding this and that…but, if…
Simply Put: Local Public Gardens A couple of the Behnke staff went to Swarthmore College near Philadelphia recently to attend a perennial conference. We also walked around the Swarthmore Campus (which hosts the Scott Arboretum) and spent an afternoon at…
For the urban/suburban gardener, dealing with deer and other warm-blooded garden grazers is generally a case of discouraging their feeding in your garden. You can probably visualize herds of discouraged deer, walking dejectedly down the street, looking for some hosta to terrorize, their little white tails limp. Bad posture and everything. Sooner or later they will feed, it’s just that you are trying to get them to feed elsewhere, maybe on the next street.