Now that the snow has melted, I can see where my dog, Lily, (looking guilty, at left) has been. Certain sections of our front yard are covered with “dog spots,” those brown circular marks created by dog urine. Solutions to dog spots are all over the web and range from having your dog drink tomato juice (I’m not sure Lily…
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For the last week or so, in between sleet storms, I’ve been watching robins pecking at the fruit on the three big sumacs at the edge of our property. (The robin is on the third sumac fruit from the left.) That’s what I love about sumac. It fits with our property and the environment around us. It supplies structure in…
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It’s still too early to be tromping around in the garden, so the great weather on Saturday seemed like an invitation to finish some garden building projects. So, after picking up some deck screws and 2-by-2 posts at the local lumberyard, I started work on my new raised bed. (I bought the cedar for the sides last fall.) This bed…
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Spring is one of the big seasons for releasing garden books, and a pile of them have landed on my desk recently. Some will be reviewed in Northern Gardener, but we have room for only one review per issue, so I thought I’d review a few here as I wait for the snow to melt (happening rapidly!) and the ground…
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The late, great Malcolm Burleigh, an award winning grower and breeder of cacti and succulents, approached me once with an idea for an article in Northern Gardener about the pH of city water and its effect on plants. Malcolm and one of his cactus-growing friends from California had discovered that city water tends to be much more alkaline than rain…
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