With our relatively dry spring, it’s a great time to prepare garden soil for spring planting. Remove weeds from the area as much as possible. Incorporate generous amounts of organic materials and other amendments, into the sandy soils. Most soils in our area tend to be all sand; they

You may have heard that you can change the color of a hydrangea’s flowers by adjusting soil pH. But there’s a little more to it than that. First of all, not all hydrangeas produce blue flowers. Hydrangeas with white or cream flowers, such as Annabelle hydrangeas, oakleaf h

Giant thistle-like plants, artichokes and cardoons are beautiful as well as edible. Their prickly-silver leaves make an excellent backdrop in any garden. Artichokes and cardoons are fun and relatively easy to grow in our coastal gardens. By mulching and cutting them back in the fall,

August is an ideal time to plant seeds for a second gardening season that can be as productive as your major early spring plantings. For a delicious and very nutritious cornucopia of fall meals, late summer is the time to plant lettuces, some herbs  (dill, garlic, chives, arugula, par

Make sure your landscape receives enough water to avoid drought stress. Our weather goes from plants getting water and moisture every day to no rain for months. Even established plants, especially rhododendrons and flowering spring shrubs can use an occasional watering in the summer.

Arbutus unedo – Strawberry Tree  Arbutus unedo, commonly called Strawberry Tree, Apple of Cain, or Cane Apple, is an evergreen shrub or small tree in the family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean region and western Europe north to western France and Ireland. Most often seen

While compost is great for all garden soils, poor soils Really benefit from incorporating compost. Whether your soil is mostly sand, mostly clay, or somewhere in between, composting will help build workable, healthy, garden soil. Building soil is an essential concept for good organic 

Trees and shrubs often are forgotten when it comes time to fertilize the yard in the spring. Young trees, especially those with a trunk diameter of less than six inches, can benefit from regular applications of fertilizer. Older trees or those in lawns do not need as much fertilizer a