It pains me to see customers spending hundreds of dollars on new plants and simultaneously refusing to spend a few more on a bag or two of compost and a box of starter fertilizer. These two items are not unnecessary “add-ons” that the retailer is just trying to add to the sale, they are critical components of a successful transplanting process - or as I like to refer to them as “plant insurance”. Unless you have phenomenal soil, you should always add compost and starter fertilizers when you are planting new plants. Here is why…
What is the image that comes to your mind when I say the word ‘tree’? Is it one of our towering conifers like a Doug Fir or Western Red Cedar, or maybe our native Big Leaf Maple? Or perhaps your thoughts go to the mighty Oak or Weeping Willow or Sycamore. These are all large specimens that have the classic morphology of what most of us think of as a tree. But, can a ‘tree’ also be…
April is a floriferous month to be sure, but along with all those glorious rhodies, tulips, daffodils, flowering cherries and magnolias, there is also an amazing array of new foliage emerging from both evergreen plants as well as deciduous ones. Personally, I find these foliar displays just as exciting as the floral ones….
Something special happened in the garden this last week. We experienced the vernal equinox, a time when we receive exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night… Once we hit this spot, when our day lengths start to exceed our night lengths, we can expect to experience magical things happening in the garden…
Speaking as a self-proclaimed “plantaholic” who likes just about all things with foliage, fronds, or needles, one plant I started to salivate over in the 1990’s was Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia sp.). For us in northern latitudes, these mythical plants were uncommon and were perceived as…