News Filed Under Lawn and Garden
Native plants are talked about quite a lot in the gardening world. Everyone talks about what great plants they are to have in your landscape, but what exactly are they?
STARKVILLE, Miss. -- When planting loblolly pine trees on well-drained soils, landowners should heed two basic rules: Don’t do it during a freeze, and make sure to plant roots and seedlings deep.
To increase the chance of survival on well-drained soils, some Southern regeneration foresters suggest planting loblolly pine in a deep hole with the root collar several inches below the soil surface.
It’s time once again to clean those hummingbird feeders and cook up the sugar water. In Mississippi, we can set our feeders out in early March as hummingbirds are migrating north from southern climes. Providing food in backyards is important, as these birds need to consume half their body weight each day.
I woke up to a dusting of yellow pollen on my car this week, the true sign that spring is on its way! Several flowers are blooming, making the world a little more vibrant after a cold, gray winter.
Native plants have garnered a lot of attention, especially because of their relationship to pollinators, but these plants are valuable for many other reasons. In addition to pollen, they provide food and shelter for birds and other wildlife, as well as creating biodiversity in the ecosystem.
Go down the garden section of any home improvement store, and you will find a dizzying array of fertilizer options available to help you reach your garden goals. But which one should you choose?
The numbers on each bag of fertilizer mean something different, so let’s take some of the confusion out of this common problem.
If you have Bradford pear trees on your property, you are quite familiar with the odor they release. How could such a beautiful tree smell like rotting fish? The odor isn’t the only thing that makes this tree undesirable.
After a dreary winter comes every gardener’s favorite time of year: spring! Here are some hot plants you should try this season. Some varieties are fairly new, while others are making quite a comeback.
Valentine’s Day is a time for people around the world to profess their love for someone or, like most of us, our love for our gardens!
January can feel like a long month for me. The holiday bustle is over, cold temperatures settle in, and the sky turns grey for days on end. But it doesn’t stay that way for long.
The weather has been brutal lately. Cold and dreary one day, warm the next. Nevertheless, signs of spring are starting to pop up. Yellow daffodils have already started to bloom, providing everyone with a reminder that the cold weather will soon be moving out of the area.
BILOXI, Miss. -- Gardening and floral design enthusiasts and professionals can enjoy a public lecture by Martha Whitney Butler, a Bay St. Louis floral designer. Butler will deliver a floral design demonstration that includes techniques based on sustainable floral design practices, as well as her experience in art history and the use of antique and vintage floral containers.
Exceptionally low temperatures this winter caused more cold damage than our typical, milder winters. But try not to panic and prune as soon as you see damage. It is best to let the plant heal and recover what healthy tissue it still has, and then prune the dead parts a little later.
Crape myrtles are popular for their low-maintenance beauty, but they can benefit from some light pruning this time of year.
As you walk around the landscape in January and look forward to the joy of starting a flower or vegetable garden, don’t overlook what you are stepping on. Healthy, productive plants require healthy soil. While soil may not be as eye-catching as narcissus or redbud flowers, it does require your attention.
All of us gardeners are super eager to get things moving in our landscape. And who wouldn’t be, with sunny, 70-degree January days? Of course, everything looks horrible from the “freezemageddon” that we experienced just a few weeks ago. It is still too early to start pruning and cleaning up our plants, but I must confess that I don’t always follow the rules. There may be a few plants that I just could not look at anymore.
Pssst…You know you don’t have to be a beekeeper to help support honey bees, right?
I don’t know about you, but I have been bombarded with seed catalogs this winter. Since about age 12, one of my favorite hobbies has been looking through catalogs at all the new plants.
Some new plants have forever changed the horticulture industry, while others disappear after just one season.
Plants across the state that suffered from the unusually cold weather just days before Christmas will need some help recovering from damage they suffered in the deep freeze. Mike Brown, state climatologist and Mississippi State University meteorologist, said Mississippi’s average late December temperature is 44 degrees on the coast, 38 degrees in central Mississippi and 34 degrees in north Mississippi.
Curb appeal is what everyone aims for, but how do you get that great looking yard? We all want a landscape that looks like it’s straight out of a magazine, and 2023 is the year to make it happen! Each month, we’ll put out a quick checklist of tasks to stay on top of yard maintenance. Here’s January’s list: