Spider mites

June 4, 2012

Are your plants showing yellow leaves, or even brown ones?  Do you have little cobwebs on the back of your leaves?  You may have spider mites, a common pest of ornamental plants.  These mites are tiny, almost microscopic, so they are very hard to see.  They vary in color from red to brown to green [...]

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Haiku Day on the Blogathon

May 21, 2012

Gardeners  green thumbs, Growing various plants now, Harvesting them soon,   As you can see, haiku is not my skill.  However, today is haiku day on the blogathon. For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book [...]

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Jane Goodall Still Helps Chimpanzees

May 13, 2012

Growing up, I eagerly followed Jane Goodall in the National Geographic stories about chimpanzees.  I even asked for, and received, the very expensive book she wrote about her observations of her chimpanzees, The Chimpanzees of Gombe.  She had a remarkable career but has paid for it in health difficulties that keep her out of the [...]

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Texas Two Step and Fire Ants

May 9, 2012

What, you may be asking yourself, does the Texas two step have with fire ants?  It actually is a two step method of killing the nasty little creatures.  For those of you who don’t know what a fire ant is, consider yourself lucky.  It is a little red and black ant that is originally from [...]

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Monarch Butterfly on Aster

May 7, 2012

I am seeing more monarch butterflies this year than I saw all summer last year.  The only one I saw last year was this one trying to weather a wind storm on an aster.

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Comments Problem

May 6, 2012

For some reason, the comments have been turned off on my garden blog.  I have tried reloading the theme, disabling the plugins, reloading wordpress, and nothing helped.  I have this error message: Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/lambda1/public_html/wp-content/themes/thesis_184/lib/classes/options_design.php on line 1433 Can anyone tell me how to fix this?  If so, please email [...]

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Squash Blossom

May 5, 2012

Did you know squash blossoms are edible?  In fact, Southerners take them and batter them, then fry them and eat them like fried okra.  Since only the female squash blossoms bear fruit, you can eat the male blossoms without taking away from the productivity of your vines, provided you let the bees and other bugs [...]

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How to Move From Blogger to WordPress Without Losing Your Posts

May 4, 2012

This is a reprint of an article I wrote last year at the height of the Bl0gger Outage.  I thought it might help some people again this year who decide to make the jump to WordPress. I know the Blogger outage has made some people decide to move to WordPress.  First, WordPress.com is a free [...]

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Flowering Quince

May 3, 2012

Flowering quince, also called Japonica, is one of the earliest plants to bloom in the garden.  The bright flowers may be red, white, pink, or salmon and appear on the branches before the leaves for a bit of color in a still dreary landscape. In late summer, oblong to round yellowish fruit appear on the [...]

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3 Money Saving Recipes from Your Garden

May 2, 2012

One of the best things about growing vegetables is getting to eat them fresh from the garden.  Since I am recipe challenged, I asked Michelle Rocha to contribute a guest post on the subject: Summer is just around the corner, so everyone is preparing his or her garden. You need to prepare for the future as [...]

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Rose Rosette Disease

May 1, 2012

Rose Rosette Disease is thought to be caused by a virus that came over to the United States in the 1800s with Asian wild roses.  Many of these roses were planted by settlers all over the United States and have become naturalized.  Rose Rosette Disease is now infecting cultivated roses throughout the United States, but [...]

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2012 Blogathon Kick Off Day

May 1, 2012

I will be participating in the 2012 Wordcount Blogathon during the month of May.  That means that there will be a post every day for May, some of which may have more to do with blogging than my usual garden posts.  I appreciate your patience as we go through this month and look forward to [...]

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Growing Italian Oregano

April 25, 2012

Oregano is an important spice in Italian cooking.  It can be used fresh or dried for year round use.  A hardy perennial, it has purple flowers the second season it is planted. Here is a snapshot of the information you need to grow Italian Oregano, which is a little sweeter and milder than Greek Oregano [...]

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Growing Garlic Chives

April 21, 2012

Garlic chives are used like regular chives but have more of a garlic flavor instead of an onion flavor.  They are good in omelets and other egg dishes.  They also work in salads, as fresh vegetables, or any savory dish.  The flowers are edible, too, although they can have a pretty strong flavor.  Garlic chives [...]

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Pretty perfumed oleanders are perfect for your patio

April 11, 2012

If you’re looking for a pretty perfumed shrub to fill a gap in a sunny spot in your garden, then look no further than oleander plants. These attractive evergreen plants provide plenty of interest to your garden all year round. Oleander bushes are great for filling gaps because you can enjoy their long, narrow leaves [...]

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Spring Plant Sale at Ft. Worth Botanical Gardens

April 9, 2012

Did you lose a bunch of plants to the drought?  Want to install hardy, drought tolerant plants in their place?  The Fort Worth Botanical Gardens is having their annual spring plant sale on April 21st from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.  Come early, as the best plants are sold out quickly. Not sure what plants [...]

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Termites

April 6, 2012

What You Should Know About Termites $5 billion—that’s how much termites are estimated to cause in property damage each year in the United States. Is your home or business a victim of this wood-destroying insect? Get the facts on termites, and protect yourself from these demolishing pests.   Did you know there are three major [...]

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Rascal Flatts Fly Away Contest

April 4, 2012

Rascal Flatts is one of my favorite country acts.  They are having a contest right now giving away two seats to one of their concerts.  Here is the information: About the Flyaway Contest One lucky winner and their guest will be treated to two tickets and meet-and-greet passes to see Rascal Flatts on their summer [...]

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March Garden Update

April 2, 2012

My garden is all planted.  Some of the things I planted in late February (I got started three weeks late) are growing quite a bit.  Others are just beginning, such as the watermelon and canteloupe. I planted all heirloom varieties in my garden this year.  I planted: Rainbow Radishes Easter Egg II Gourmet Beets Golden [...]

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Dallas Water Wise Landscaping Contest

March 29, 2012

If you live in the Dallas area, you can win some fantastic prizes for low water landscaping. Call for Entries for 18th Annual Water-Wise Landscape Tour Entry Deadline: April 13, 2012 The annual Water-Wise Landscape Tour, to be held Saturday, June 2, 2012, is open to all landscapes within Dallas city limits and the city [...]

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Growing Vegetables in North Central Texas

March 26, 2012

Want to grow vegetables but not sure what type to plant or how to grow them?  Vegetable Gardening in North Central Texas, my new book, tells you exactly how to plant and grow the most common vegetables.  Further, it tells you which cultivar(s) of each vegetable grows best in North Central Texas.  Even if you [...]

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Cherry Blossoms at the Dallas Arboretum

March 22, 2012

The Dallas Arboretum reports that their cherry blossom trees are in full bloom for this weekend.  One hundred years ago, Japan gave the United States the cherry trees that line the capital streets.  The Dallas Arboretum has cherry trees that are in bloom and is celebrating this anniversary by featuring them this weekend. If cherry [...]

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Growing Tomatoes

March 14, 2012

Tomatoes are the most popular vegetable to grow in the United States.  They are not difficult to grow from transplants, and can even be grown from seed with a little extra effort.  Buying transplants from your local nursery, or just about anywhere garden products are sold, is easy and gives you well started plants to [...]

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Teaching entomology to children

March 7, 2012

I recently had the opportunity to give a talk to a group of children on entomology.  The talk was on good bugs and bad bugs and was aimed at teaching the kids that 1)most bugs are beneficial, 2)they won’t harm the children if the children don’t harm them, and 3)don’t squash the bugs — they [...]

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Paypal Censors Authors — Make Them Stop Doing So

March 3, 2012

Today I received an email from Smashwords, who distributes one of my books, Preparing a Vegetable Garden from the Ground Up.  Paypal, who is the vendor who processes credit card payments for Smashwords, has given them an ultimatum:  remove all books containing any scenes of rape, bestiality, or incest from their shelves or lose their [...]

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