Plant Gardens 101

As they are common throughout the U.S., toads can be easily attracted to your garden. Chipped flower pots can be an excellent home for your new pest control service. Here’s what to do:

Encouraging Garden Guests

Toads are primarily nocturnal, and are mostly inactive during the day. Here are some steps for encouraging them to live in shady garden spaces:

* You can chip out a hole along the rim of a terra cotta flower pot. The hole can be created and adjusted using a ceramic tile cutting tool. The entrance hole should be about 2 or 3 inches wide and a couple of inches deep. * Place each inverted flower pot in a shady spot where it won’t be exposed to direct sun. Toads also enjoy damp garden mulch, as they partially bury themselves during the heat of the day. * Use flower pot saucers to provide water near each toad home. Toads drink by absorbing water through their skin, and they prefer a moist environment. (more…)

Spending time outdoors without being buzzed and bitten by flying insects can be a challenge, but purple martins can help by consuming hundreds of flying insects a day. Here’s how to attract purple martins to your backyard. (Note: Purple martins nest throughout the eastern U.S., but winter in Central and South America. If you live outside of their nesting range, providing a martin house typically will not attract purple martins to your backyard.)

Backyard Apartment Communities: Martins are Colony Nesters

The purple martin is a large blue-black swallow whose plumage shines an iridescent purple. It snaps up insects while airborne, and rarely sits still except when incubating eggs or roosting at night. Unlike many songbirds that pair up and defend a specific territory from birds of the same species, purple martins traditionally nest in colonies, and U.S. populations are dependent upon humans for a home–the purple martin bird house. You can buy purple martin homes from specialty bird watching shops, nurseries, and garden supply stores within the birds’ range. Martin homes are typically designed with two or three stories with each containing several nesting units. Martin houses are designed for easy assembly and cleaning at the end of the nesting season. (more…)

Regular lawn maintenance means removing weeds from your lawn. At the first sign of weeds, many homeowners run to the local home and garden center to purchase caustic chemicals. When it comes to lawn care, this can be a major mistake. Eliminating weeds can be accomplished by knowing what kind of weeds you have and how they behave.

Weeds Have Unique Personalities

Before you load up your sprayer and hit your lawn with a blast of Roundup, consider this: weeds, just like other plants, have their own characteristics. They typically grow differently, flourish in a variety of conditions and can be quite resilient. If you understand that, you may want to hold off treatment until you discover exactly what types of weeds you’re dealing with. (more…)

For hundreds of years, superstitious Europeans thought fairy rings were caused by dancing leprechauns. Alas, fairy rings are actually caused by fungi that create halos of fast-growing, deep green grass that eventually turn brown and fill with mushrooms, leaving dead grass roots just below the soil line.

More than 50 species of ring-shaped fungi have been identified as plaguing under-watered and under-fertilized lawns. Ring-causing fungi can sink as deep as four feet into the soil (though usually only about 20 inches), spreading a network of mycelium spores completely across your lawn.

The disease can kill off a lawn by producing hydrogen cyanide as a by-product and leaving waxy deposits in the soil, which interfere with water and feed absorption by the grass roots. (more…)

There’s nothing quite like a well-manicured backyard lawn in the summertime. It can be perfect for pick-up games, family gatherings, or just walking around in your bare feet. If you love your backyard and want to maximize your enjoyment of it, check out these three simple management tips that can enhance its inner beauty.

Lawn Care Tip #1: Facilitate Drainage
If your backyard features rolling elevation, sometimes rain and irrigation can gather into large puddles. Excess water can encourage mold and slime growth. After an intense rain examine the area to determine where the water collects. Dig a six-inch ditch from the middle of this area to the closest backyard border and fill with gravel to assist with proper drainage. (more…)

As the summer begins to wind down, plan ahead for the cooler autumn season in the garden. Here is a list of ten tips to follow as you work in the garden this fall.

1. Plant perennials. Fall is a great moment to plant those hearty year-rounders, the plants and flowers that look lovely and keep their health despite the climate. Chrysanthemums, boltonia, angelica, salvia and aster are all low garden maintenance.

2. Don’t be straightforward with your plants. Curving lines are great for a garden, as some plants tend to follow the beat of their own drummer when they grow. Planting in straight lines may only frustrate you when they don’t grow that way, and curving lines give your garden a more creative appearance anyway.

3. Keep the soil most. Don’t let the cooler temperatures fool you; this is easy to forget, but essential to the success of your garden, and especially new plants and flowers. The autumn season brings rain in many climates, making this one an easy step to follow. (more…)