General Garden Info
Georgia Cities and Their Flower Festivals
Many Georgia communities are proud of the flowers that easily grow in their area. As a result, they celebrate their “city flowers” at festivals throughout the year. Here is a list I recently compiled. If you know of another, please...
Kudzu as a Farm Crop – USDA Farmers Bulletin No. 1923
I recently found a faded copy of Kudzu as a Farm Crop in my “way back” files. Asking around, the Gwinnett Extension office had a better copy. This brought back further memories of my grandfather, Walter Cowart, who was a...
Dirt Can Make You Happy!
On my radio show, I exhort listeners to discover the happiness that gardening brings. Little did I know that certain bacteria in the soil are responsible! Following is a blog post by Naomi Sachs, of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network ...
UGA Plant Disease Publications
Following are useful plant disease publications from UGA: Azalea Diseases Camellia Diseases Cane Blight of Blackberry Centipedegrass Decline Christmas Tree Diseases Common Landscape Diseases in Georgia Common Tomato Diseases in Georgia Diagnostic Guide to Common Home Orchard Diseases Disease Control...
Hydrangea Summer Pruning – Step by Step
The recent summer rains filled the leaves and roots of my hydrangeas with water, making them strong. Now that the flowers have faded in late June I can prune them to the size I want for next year. Look at...
Espaliering
Espaliering is the art of training a plant to grow in a formal pattern, typically in a flat plane. Fans, double cordon, vertical cordon, palmetto, and Belgian Fence are common shapes but there is no reason to limit your imagination...
Frost Tolerance – Vegetables and Flowers
When frost is forecast, whether in spring or fall, some vegetables and flowers are more or less likely to be damaged. Here is a list of plants and their tolerance of light frost: Vegetables Hardy Slightly Tolerant Tender Asparagus Beet...
Protecting Plants from Snow and Ice
Every family has a medicine chest where emergency medical supplies are kept. If you have children, they demand special supplies. Adhesive bandages, kid-strength pain reliever and medicated ointment are all part of the preparations for those accidental events of childhood....
Compost Tea – Does It Work
Linda Chalker-Scott is a scientist at Washington State University who researches common garden claims and comments on their usefulness. Her thoughts on compost tea are printed below: WSU Master Gardeners are often asked about compost tea (and other products) but...
Flowery Branch – History
When I remarked on the beautiful name of a local town, a caller promised to send me its history. Here it is! —————————————————————————- Flowery Branch Chartered in 1874, this little town is one of the oldest in Hall County. It...
Planting a Living Christmas Tree – Songs
Sam Zamarripa is a parent, a financial advisor, and a former Georgia legislator. He began a tradition of planting living Christmas trees when his children were in grade school and led a group of neighbors who made this a tradition...
Deadheading
Since a plant’s goal is simply to reproduce itself, once it has produced mature flowers, it will often stop producing any more. You can eliminate the signals telling the plant to stop flowering by regularly removing faded flowers. Petunias, cosmos,...
Garden Coach – Finding
Sometimes you just want someone to come over and suggest ways you could be a better gardener. You want someone to identify plants and give you ideas on other plants you could use. That person is called a garden coach....
Extension Offices – Odd Questions
University of Georgia Extension offices are sometimes the place of last resort for people with odd questions. Extension agents and their assistants sometimes, however, get questions just a bit beyond the pale. Aaron Lancaster, Extension agent in Bibb county, posed...
CD’s Yield 3.5% – Plants Yield 400%
My mother explained it to me carefully: I should give her my newly earned $5.00 and we would open a savings account for me. In nine years (double my age at that time!) it would “grow” and I could use...
Why I Weed By Hand
(written in 1993) Those warm days around the first of March nearly killed me! I raked leaves, mowed the lawn, dug a carrot bed, pruned figs, sprayed weed killer, spread fertilizer and planted raspberries – all in one weekend! Those...
Mulch – More Myths
It is hard to mess up making macaroni and cheese from a box, but somehow I did it. During a recent kitchen foray, I mixed in a handful of my son’s other favorite food, bacon. This immediately rendered the entree...
Drought – A Brief History in Georgia
Each year that Georgia suffers through a dry summer, we proclaim that it is an unusual occurrence…a “Drought of the Century”! Would you believe that we’ve had five “Droughts of the Century” since 1924? Master Gardener Maria Helena Dolan collected...
