Did you ever pick a big, red tomato and slice it open, only to find you should have left it on the vine a little longer? You can find tips on harvesting vegetables, including when to pick them, from the Home Garden Seed Association, which also goes by ezfromseed.org. In most cases, tomatoes should be not only fully colored, but slightly soft when squeezed, according to the Home Garden Seed Association. There are some exceptions. Large heirloom tomatoes can be…...
Aphids can cause problems in your garden because they feed on so many different plants. Not only that, aphids can breed quickly. Aphids can reproduce asexually– no males are necessary, according to an article on aphids in this month’s issue of WNY Gardening Matters, produced by the Master Gardeners of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Erie County. Spring and summer aphids are all females and so are their offspring. Find out more about aphids and what you can do if they…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko “Compared to 10 years ago, calls and questions about ticks have more than doubled,” said John Farfaglia, extension educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension in Niagara County. The geographic range of ticks has been increasing, he said, and ticks can transmit Lyme disease as well as other diseases. Are you at risk in your garden? Your garden probably isn’t a high-risk place, but the areas near your garden might be. If your yard has well tended beds…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko How would you like a wall of hydrangeas? This display intrigued me at the annual conference of GWA: The Association of Garden Communicators held right here in Buffalo from Friday to yesterday. At the trade show, this wall of blooms was used by Bailey Nurseries, a grower, to show off its brand of reblooming hydrangeas called Endless Summer hydrangeas. You could create a blooming wall like this for a special occasion. The hydrangea plants are in…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Does sprinkling coffee grounds around roses really help the plants grow? Yes, it’s true that roses like coffee grounds, but they also like banana peels and egg shells, said C.L. Fornari, author of the book Coffee for Roses: …and 70 Other Misleading Myths About Backyard Gardening. In fact, roses like any kind of organic matter. “People have been throwing their breakfast leavings around roses for years,” she said, but if you don’t want your roses to…...
Tips on how to keep your lawn healthy without pesticides are being distributed through the Erie County Environmental Management Council, an advisory board to Erie County Department of Environment & Planning. They’ve printed it as something you can hang on your door. Get a full-size pdf of the doorhanger: Here’s the front and here’s the back. Here are the tips you will find on the doorhanger: Don’t cut the grass too short! Taller 3-inch grass outcompetes weeds, better withstands drought…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Rosemary Lyons has an ingenious way to squeeze plants into the flagstone patio that takes up all of her tiny yard. One place where there aren’t any pavers is where the wrought iron fence is set into the ground. Lyons set some bricks on each side of the fence, then filled the area around the fence with fresh soil and lots of compost. There was enough room to plant purple pole beans, and the fence was…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Everybody got some rain this past week, and some folks got a lot! Kathy Guest Shadrack lives with her husband Mike on a hilly property in Hamburg. She edits the newsletters of the Western New Hosta Society and the Buffalo Area Daylily Society and included this in a recent hosta message: “We had a waterfall down our terraces and we have new mini-streams etched under our deck. Furthermore, our road was flooded—wait for it— at the…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko “We’re making people fall in love with their own city again,” said Jim Bragg, one of the organizers of the Black Squirrel Garden Walk in the Memorial Park neighborhood of Niagara Falls. “Every yard has a story.” The 1970s and ’80s hit the neighborhood hard, Bragg said. “There’s a perception that all of this should be bulldozed,” Bragg said, but the neighborhood is not as bad as people think. “It’s on its way up.” Efforts by neighborhood…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Contrary to what many gardeners believe, fertilizing your annuals won’t cause them to “bloom out” or be done blooming before the summer is over, said Jen Weber, retail manager at Mike Weber Greenhouses, 42 French Rd., West Seneca. “It’s just the opposite,” Weber said. “Without the fertilizer, your plants won’t reach their potential. They’ll be smaller, thinner, weaker, leggier-looking plants.” In the case of petunias, verbena and calibrachoa (million bells), they will become leggy, won’t bloom…...
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