This has been my version of “spring break” through the years….Peonies popping out of the ground. A welcome sight usually in late March and reliable as clock work! They are tough and cold tolerant perennials that thrill us with their beauty year after year! Peonies are...
Plants will always be inspiring and after years of walking around with a plant in one hand and a shovel in the other trying to find a place to plant it, I have learned 10 easy to follow rules to a better home landscape design. Walking and running through neighborhoods it is easy to see who had a plan, who had a concept, and who was operating by the seat of their plants. If you “over do” it you will have a do over on your hands. Use the look around rule. Avoid what we call monoculture. Too much of one thing can be a problem. Diversity is important in the landscape. If you plant too much of one type of plant and a problem crops up like an insect or disease, it will spread like wildfire without a proper amount of diversity in your yard. Look around your yard, your neighbors yard, is there a plant that is let’s say, over done? Approach your landscape in bite size pieces....
Honk if you’re happy the snow is finally melting! We’re all “down” with that. And my daughter sent me this picture from New York City. I told her raccoons generally sleep under cars because they have to get up “oily” in the morning.
Many people use the yellow blooms of the forsythia to indicate spring has finally arrived and the soil temperatures have warmed. When the forsythia blooms they use it as an indicator to apply the first lawn fertilizer application of the year along with pre-emergence crabgrass control. A more scientific and accurate approach would be to measure the soil temperature and gauge if it has reached somewhere between 55 and 60 degrees at the 2 inch depth. Regardless, the ubiquitous presence of forsythia in bloom visually opens the floodgates of lawn activity every year. But what about the forsythia’s ability to forecast remaining winter weather like Punxsutawney Phil back in February? Do you believe the old weather tale which states that Forsythia can forecast late spring snowfall? The theory, tale or belief is that once the forsythia blooms there will be 3 more snows. They could be...
