Holiday party centerpiece made with donated and natural materials
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Making Holiday Centerpieces From Natural Materials
Although Honeysuckle can be a lovely plant, many species can be invasive and destructive. If you want to rid your property of invasive Honeysuckle, I wrote an article on how to do it.
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Tips for Removing Invasive Honeysuckle
What do I normally do to prepare my garden for winter? I panic the night before a frost is predicted. I lay old towels on the floor to protect it from dirt and dampness and bring inside all the container plants that are not hardy. When I get time I then stick the plants where I can make some room in my condo which is for the most part not very well-lit. Some of my plants survive this kind of laissez-faire treatment for years but many of them although alive don’t look as good as they could. I think some planning is called for if I want to do better than have hit-or-miss results this year.
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Strategies for Maintaining My Garden Through the Winter
When choosing containers, first keep in mind what style of garden you have. You can break design “rules” but you will have more predictable success if you try to match the style of pots to the style of home and garden you have.
Read more about container gardening on the Schnarr’s Hardware Blog.
One of my frequent landscaping tasks in summer is weeding at clients’ properties. Many of the weeds can be hand-pulled, but on a recent occasion there was such an abundance of Prostrate Spurge (Euphorbia maculata) that it was hopeless to try to pull it in a reasonable amount of time.
Read about how we decided to deal with the Spurge on the Schnarr’s Hardware Blog!
This is the time of year when small lakes, ponds and water gardens sometimes get green “pea soup” water or mats of algae floating on the surface. The limiting factors for algae growth are mainly food and sunlight. If you can reduce the amount of sunlight and nutrients getting into the water, you can reduce algae growth in your water feature.
Read more on the Schnarr’s blog! Help – My Pond is Full of Algae!
Aquatic Macro Invertebrates are animals without a backbone that live in water and can be seen with the naked eye. I’ve had an interest in these creatures ever since I can remember. When I was young I caught a variety of water invertebrates such as water beetles, clams, crawdads and snails and attempted to maintain them in my aquariums. I was thrilled when my brother’s aquarium started to grow hydra even though they predate on tiny fish, because I’d read about them but never thought I’d see any. I currently have small colonies of freshwater shrimp in three of my aquariums. Many aquatic invertebrates are insects that live part of their life cycles in water but have an adult flying stage.
When the Litzinger Road Ecology Center offered a training workshop for volunteers on how Aquatic Macro Invertebrates are used to monitor water quality, of course I had to attend. Master Naturalist and Stream Team member Cliff Parmer taught us some Aquatic Entomology facts then we went outside to Deer Creek to learn how to take a scientific sample of water invertebrates.
Read more on the Schnarr’s Blog: Aquatic Macro Invertebrates at Litzinger Road Ecology Center
I recently had a client ask me how to get more color into his shady yard. If you have a lot of shade in your garden and want a lot of color, that’s a challenge. Most flowering shade plants don’t bloom as heavily as plants for sun. Here are some ideas to help you get some color even with this limitation.
Read more on the Schnarr’s blog: Bringing color into a shady spot
Sometimes plants that don’t look right for their intended purpose can be suitable for Bonsai. For example, this Privet bush (Ligustrum vulgare ‘Cheyenne’) was removed and replaced because it didn’t look right in the hedge where it had been growing.
Read more on the Schnarr’s blog: schnarrsblog.com
Late winter and early spring are good seasons to attract desirable bird species to your yard. Birds are not brooding eggs yet because they need to wait until later in spring when there is enough insect food to feed their young. However, they are now engaged in, well, getting engaged! In other words many birds are scouting out nest sites and selecting mates if they haven’t done that already. Some of the most sought-after backyard bird species are heavy insect eaters. Raising live mealworms is so easy, I started by accident!
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How to Raise Mealworms For Your Backyard Birds