The sun and the earth have revolved to the relevant positions in space and spring, ladies and gentlemen, has definitely sprung. While I have the opposite of green thumbs, I now have a handy arsenal of gardening apps to help me in my springtime garden.
If you think corralling tomato horned worms and snails in your garden is hard work, try wrangling children. Actually, says Monette Meo, who teaches at St. Perpetua School in Lafayette, children are the best crop your garden will ever grow.
Meo was a weekend gardener when she witnessed first hand the importance of children in the garden. She was a mom herself and did lots of volunteer work at her children's school, but it wasn't until she started working at a school that had a garden that she saw what it could provide. Every time the teacher would Click Here
The urge to garden in early spring is primal. Re-connecting with the earth is affirming, renewing, promising. Waking up the garden to a new growing season is about more than soil and seedlings…this rite of spring is a tonic to the gardener as well Click Here
A mysterious strain of downy mildew has been killing one of the home gardener’s favorite annual flowers, Impatiens walleriana, up and down the East and West Coasts, in the Midwest, Texas and Ontario.
“We saw it here in 2011 in the fall, and it was really dramatic,” said Margery Daughtrey, a plant pathologist at the Cornell University extension center in Riverhead, N.Y. “Gorgeous plants, flowering two feet tall, and then the flowers start disappearing and leaves drop and stems fall over and then the stems disappear.”
Since then, it has only worsened. Lois Carswell, the co-chair of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden plant sale, which has been held in Click Here for More
Happy Easter and Happy Passover from all the employees at In the Green Landscaping
A Garden of Delights, Mapped Out in Your Hand. The sun and the earth have revolved to the relevant positions in space and spring, ladies and gentlemen, has definitely sprung. While I have the opposite of green thumbs, I now have a handy arsenal of gardening apps to help me in my springtime garden. Read More
If your lawn had waves of coastal water pouring over it, the best management practice for those flooded lawns is to leach salts through the soil and away from the roots. All of the rain following Sandy has been very helpful. High salt levels in the soil solution draws water out of germinating seedlings and the roots of plants, causing desiccation.
Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) application removes sodium from soil, by calcium ions displacing the sodium ions. The sodium ions are then flushed through the soil, and out of the rooting zone. Therefore, following a broadcast application of gypsum, the area must be irrigated to leach the sodium through the soil. Gypsum is usually added at 46-138 lbs/1000 square feet. Gypsum is much more effective for silt and clay soils then for sandy soils. In clay soils, the excess sodium leads to deflocculation and destruction of soil aggregates causing a “chemical compaction.” Thus the addition of gypsum to clay soils will also help improve the soil texture.
The addition of compost will help improve the soil and mitigate salty or brackish water effects on soils. Do not use manure, sewage sludge, or any other compost that may have high salt content.
If you want a quick test to check the health of your soil, try sprouting (indoors under houseplant conditions) a few tomato, cucumber, lettuce, or clover seeds in affected soil and also, as a control, sprout some seeds in soil that you know was not exposed to extra salt. If the seedlings in the affected soil do not grow or begin to be sickly at the two leaf stage compared to the ones in the unaffected soil, then you know there are salts in the soil.
Test the soil for pH and salts before reseeding in the spring to be sure the soil is viable. Autumn is the best time for renovation, but if necessary renovation can be done in the spring. Cores aerate to improve the soil, along with the addition of compost, followed by seeding
Cornell University
Cooperative Extension
Nassau County
The common bedding impatiens walleriana, have been getting a new downy mildew, that makes the plant look like green sticks.
We recommend not to plant these common bedding impatiens for several seasons until hopefully a cure is found.
New Guinea impatiens are not affected.
