Espoma
Spring Feed Your Lawn – ORGANICALLY
This is the month to apply Espoma’s Spring Lawn Booster 8-0-0 to wake up turf. This organic fertilizer – safe for children and pets – slowly releases nitrogen to hungry roots. This is the first in a four-step lawn care regimen Espoma has developed as part of their Safe Paws: Healthy Lawns, Happy Pets program. …
Read MoreJump-Start Gardens in Spring
With spring around the corner, I’m itching to get out in my gardens. Colorful flower gardening catalogs and magazines can only satisfy my gardening cravings for so long. At this time of the year I feel like a ship’s captain scanning the horizon for land – except I am searching for small green shoots. The…
Read MoreIndoor Seed Starting with Espoma
This is the time of the year when antsy gardening hands can finally get relief! The indoor seed starting season has begun. I am not going to pretend this is an area of expertise for me. When I do seed plants, which are primarily perennials, I plant them directly into my gardens in spring. So…
Read MoreAct Now for Rich Blue Hydrangeas Next Year
There is something about full-flowered, rich blue Hydrangea blooms that sets your heart a’flutter. Maybe this only happens to those of us in colder zones (6 or lower) that find it so rare to have ANY flowers on our bigleaf Hydrangeas (pictured – Hydrangea macrophylla CITYLINE ‘Venice’). Let’s face the brutal facts. ALL bigleaf hydrangeas…
Read MorePerennializing Spring Blooming Bulbs
I hate having to repeat myself, but when it comes to digging in spring blooming bulbs each fall to replace those that fizzled away or were munched by critters, I CAN stop this expensive, repetitive madness. Now I plant long-lived, naturalizing bulbs that stick around for years. Here are a few of my tried and…
Read MoreLove Your Lawn this Fall
Fall is the ideal time to prep your lawn for a healthy, thicker green carpet next year. The cooler weather is perfect for seeding in new lawns or overseeding those that have grown ‘thin at the top’. Also treat blades to Espoma’s Fall Winterizer (8-0-5), an organic fertilizer rich in nitrogen and potassium. Nitrogen encourages…
Read MoreDemstyfiing Hydrangeas
Hydrangeas are the number one googled flowering shrub on the internet. I’m not surprised, given their captivating beauty, but also because of the confusion that prevails concerning their care and pruning. No wonder my PowerPoint on Growing Honkin’ Hydrangeas is so popular. But a helpful resource available right now at your fingertips is on Espoma’s…
Read MoreSolutions for Powdery Mildew
Powdery mildew is a common problem in the summer garden. It can infect vegetables, roses, perennials, shrubs and trees. Although there are many varieties of this mildew, it usually presents itself as white or powdery gray spots on leaves, although it can also grow on stems, flowers and even fruit. Although it may look bad,…
Read MoreEspoma helps divided plants thrive!
Spring is a great time to divide many summer and fall-blooming perennials that have grown too big for their britches and are crowding neighboring plants. Dividing plants is good for them, despite how stressful it may look or feel to you. Division stimulates new root growth. Younger roots are more efficient at their job than…
Read MoreOrganic Weed Control for Lawns
Healthy lawns make stunning ‘picture frames’ for beautiful flower gardens. And I’m not taking about chemically-dependent lawns! With all of the wonderful organic products now available, there is truly no excuse to be spreading chemicals that negatively impact children, pets, wildlife and our groundwater. Stop it!…..pretty please? As many of you know, my family used…
Read More