Pests, Plagues, and Varmints

Because my 'Josef Lemper' hellebore was turning yellow, I decided to contact my source for advice. This plant was sent to me to try out in my garden compliments of Skagit Gardens, so I contacted Rhonda Jennings, who sent me the sample, to see what she thought. The best thing to do, if you haven’t [...]

A lot of my plants have yellow leaves that aren't supposed to. It's been raining frequently--often heavy downpours--and when it hasn't been raining it's been quite humid. So both the air and the soil are saturated--a recipe for plant disease if the plants aren't adapted to those conditions. Here's what I've been seeing: Why is [...]

Last fall, I planted 150 species tulips. My last words on that post were "it will still look beautiful next spring." Boy, was I wrong. The snowdrops that I had divided came up. At least some of the crocus that I divided came up. And four tulips emerged and bloomed. Four. Out of one hundred [...]

They're having a plant clinic over at Garden Rant, and I decided to submit the perplexing, premature leaf drop my 'Autumn Brilliance' Juneberry exhibits every year. The leaf drop was addressed in today's clinic, but since they didn't show all the images, I thought I'd share them here. So much for autumn brilliance, huh? Though [...]

Friday the garden looked fine. Saturday we were gone, Sunday it rained. On Monday I asked my husband to dig up some new potatoes for our supper, and he discovered the garden was infected with Phytophthora infestans, commonly known as late blight. Ideal conditions for late blight are days in the 70sF (~20sC) and nights [...]

Almost exactly a year ago, my 'Endless Summer' hydrangea was blooming. This year, as you can see above, it doesn't even have buds. Okay, I forgot to feed it. Does it completely fail to make buds without fertilizer? I think not. It may not flower as profusely, and the blooms may not be as big, [...]

My daughter just went out to her garden and found all her basil seedlings snipped off and left. Not eaten and not even wilted yet.

Most of you don't realize it, but Cold Climate Gardening is host to a secret club, the Stink Bug Haters Club. It all started innocently enough with this post. But as more and more stink bug sufferers found the post and took advantage of the Subscribe to Comments feature, it started to take on a [...]

Many gardening books for children take what I think of as the art project approach: here's what you need, this is what you do, isn't that cute?, now show it to Grandma. Very few books out there take children--or a child's interest in gardening--seriously. I prefer to regard children as apprentice gardeners, gradually acquiring more [...]