General

McLane is a famous brand that specialized in manufacturing super high quality cutting lawn and garden equipment. Their 801 5.50GT Gross Torque Briggs & Stratton 9-Inch Gas Powered Lawn Edger with 8″ Ball Bearing Wheels is made of heavy duty steel frames with dual cutter-head bearings to provide a better and smoother cutting. This McLane edger also includes rubber replaceable …

Worms farms are a great way to recycle your kitchen scraps and are excellent for small gardens, better than compost bins. The best worms for worms farms are tigers, blues and reds and they can be bought from your local nursery. Remember, they don’t survive in the garden, so when you are adding your vermicasts (the manure) to your garden, …

What do you want the garage for? Perhaps you want to park the car in it or to store the lawn mower and a few garden tools. Maybe it will be used as the workshop you always wanted. A basic straight forward garage is not that expensive to build but as your requirements go up so does the cost of …

Lilies come in several different varieties with blooming times from midsummer through early fall. Plant some of each variety for a continuous supply of blooms throughout the growing season. Although you can plant lily bulbs in spring, fall is the best time for planting as it gives them time to develop a strong root system before breaking into vegetative growth …

Spring blooming lupines, Lupinus albus, were cultivated 4,000 years ago by the Egyptians. In the Americas, Lupinus mutabilis were brought into cultivation 1,500 years ago. Although we think of lupines as flowers, they are grown as a feed for livestock in many parts of the world. Because they grow well on poor, sandy soils and in fact improve the soil, …

Honeysuckle vines, belonging to the Lonicera species, are easy to grow, heat-tolerant, vigorous and nearly indestructible. They are commonly used to climb up a trellis, fence, or other framework. Less well known is their use as a ground cover for erosion control. Said to protect your garden from evil, honeysuckle is known as the “love bind” because it symbolizes a …

Hydrangeas are those large, bush-type perennials with the giant flower heads in either white, pink, or blue. They’re also called “mophead” or “lacecap.” Fossil records show that hydrangeas grew in North America between 40 and 70 million years ago, and about 25 million years ago in Asia. They bloom in mid to late summer and keep their flowers long after …

Salvia is a popular flowering plant for urban gardens. With a combination of over 700 annual and perennial species, there’s a type of salvia out there for everyone. They can prolifically reseed themselves, like the ones in the photo at left. These are growing in the cut out area of a sidewalk around the installation of a telephone pole. They …

In Minneapolis today workers hoisted the last steel beam to the top of the new baseball stadium. Attached to the steel beam was a pine tree. The tradition goes back some 1200 years to the Vikings, (somehow appropriate). Scandinavian builders topped off their buildings with a sheaf of grain for the horse of their beloved god, Odin. For his part, …

Soil moisture meters are devices used to measure the percentage of water found in potting or ground soil. They determine whether crops require watering or if their soil is over-saturated and require a drying out period to maintain the health of the plants. They are not expensive and can be found at home and garden shops. Typical readouts on the …