Garden tips for the Buffalo area.
by Connie Oswald Stofko The forecast for the coming week calls for daytime temperatures above freezing, so if we do get any snow, it should melt. That means you’ll have time to easily walk around your yard and prepare your gardens for another onslaught of snow. When the temperatures do get colder, chances are we will get lake effect snow again. Lake Erie still hasn’t iced over, so cold wind picking up moisture from the lake can fall on land…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko David Clark, CNLP has sad arborvitaes in his Hamburg yard. “They’re about 15 feet tall, but they’re bent lower than my knees,” he told me over the weekend. While that’s bad, it’s not as bad as it could be because the soil wasn’t frozen yet. The roots of the arborvitaes could come out of the ground a little bit and allow the shrubs to tip, preventing the trunk from snapping. Your azaleas and rhododendrons will be…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Are you ready to see colorful flowers, unique garden art and an overall beautiful landscape? In this video, Jay Jinge Hu, who shares his own landscape on Open Gardens, takes us on a tour of the gardens of Mitch Flynn and Ellen Goldstein, who will again this year share their landscape on Open Gardens and Garden Walk Buffalo. Whatever you enjoy about a garden, you can probably find in these gardens. There’s the sculpture Flynn made…...
Trees are valuable in many ways, and it really hits home when you link numbers to the value. Here are just a few of the statistics in the article “The Value of Trees By the Numbers” in the newest edition of The Optimistic Gardener: The Optimistic Gardener is produced by the Master Gardeners of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties. Find the newsletter on the gardening page of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Chautauqua (on the lefthand side) and in Cattaraugus (on the…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Some people can’t wait for spring; they want to see crocuses and tulips and other spring bulb plants blooming inside their homes while it’s still winter. If you’re one of those people, find out how to force bulbs with the great information here from Patti Jablonski-Dopkin, general manager at Urban Roots Cooperative Garden Market, 428 Rhode Island St., Buffalo. Now is the time to begin the process of forcing bulbs, that is, tricking the bulbs to flower…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Now is the time to think about overwintering plants so you can enjoy them next year. In “What plants do you overwinter in Western New York?”, you’ll find guidelines on which plants are happy outside in the winter, which plants you should bring inside and which plants might be difficult for you to overwinter. That article includes links to many other helpful articles. Here are more related topics:…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Blue skies! Highs in the 80s! What more could we want in Western New York? We might be celebrating, but are your plants happy? We haven’t had much rain in the past month, plus we’ve had hot, breezy conditions. That sucks the moisture out of the soil. Make sure you are watering often enough. Concentrate your watering efforts on these plants: See the U.S. Drought Monitor here. Most of Western New York is abnormally dry, while…...
One way to keep mosquitoes from biting you is by keeping them out of your yard in the first place. The most common mosquito in New York State is Culex pipiens, which has a very small territory. It usually stays within 300 feet of its breeding site, according to this page on mosquitoes from New York State Integrated Pest Management (NYS IPM). If you and your Western New York neighbors make sure there are no breeding sites, everyone can have a…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko I have been writing about lesser celandine for 11 years, but I realized I hadn’t addressed in detail what to do if your whole yard, or a large section of your yard, is covered with lesser celandine. Here are questions I got from a local gardener: Hi Connie, I bought a new house last spring in the Elmwood Village (area of Buffalo). It’s beautiful but both the front and back yards are total carpets of lesser…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko When should you plant garlic? The usual recommendation is October. (It overwinters and you harvest around July.) But maybe you can plant garlic in April in Western New York–and harvest the same year! I got a comment on this previous article last October from a local gardener. She had planted garlic in April: Last fall I had hand surgery and wasn’t able to get my garlic planted. I did it in spring and had a beautiful…...
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