When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle grew tomatoes in plastic buckets lined up like soldiers on the cement patio in their tiny Queens, New York, backyard. They also grew dozens of vegetables in their 10-by-10 foot (3-by-3 meter) patch of soil and installed a pergola they made from green ...
For about two weeks every spring, my letter carrier, delivery drivers and just about everyone else who walks into my yard comments on the deliciously strong scent emanating from the two lilac shrubs flanking the front gate. Most days, the breeze carries the fragrance all the way to the front ...
For the past several weeks, periodical cicadas have emerged in the wooded areas around my home. Their singing filled the air, so my husband and I ventured into the woods to get a closer look. There we saw thousands of cicadas climbing everything in sight—tree trunks, bushes, branches, ...
Got weeds in your lawn? Me too. And although it’s tempting to reach for a spray bottle, that shouldn’t be our first impulse. Believe it or not, weeds aren’t just freeloaders crashing our garden party. They’re messengers with important information that requires our attention. We ...
UNIVERSITY PARK — Professionals in the horticultural field can explore the latest flower varieties at the annual “Flower Trials Field Day,” coordinated by Penn State Extension. This event will highlight the Penn State Flower Trials, which showcase close to 1,000 types of annual and perennial plant samples submitted by 30 companies from around the world. The event will occur from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on July 24, at Penn State’s Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center, 1446 Auction Road, Manheim. The field day is designed for greenhouse growers; nursery and ...
Many of us think of rice as a plant that grows in flooded fields, and that’s because the kind of rice we’re most familiar with — the long-grain, wetland variety called lowland rice — can be considered semi-aquatic, although it’s technically a grass. Lowland rice would be ...
