Estes Country Gardens & Design

07/11/2024

Techniques such as handpicking insects and using row cover, trap crops, and insect traps will deter pests that manage to infiltrate our ecological gardens, and provide alternatives to pesticides. If you decide to use a pesticide, even an organic one, learn about selecting the proper product and follow label directions.

06/19/2024

Summer is here! Our plants are growing rapidly and it can be hard to keep up. Managing soil and water for drought and flood resilience, pulling weeds, and deterring pests and diseases will yield beauty and abundance from our gardens. Companion planting, maintaining habitat for beneficial insects, and other forms of integrated pest management are ecological practices we can use to reduce our workload and increase our garden yields.

05/29/2024

Establish different zones of your lawn using selective mowing. Allow areas that you don’t need for lawn to grow and flower into habitat, or turn them into gardens or walking paths. Leave grass clippings to decompose back into the lawn for best nutrient cycling, and mulch the clippings. A late fall mowing will keep woody plants from growing in your low mow areas. Mow your lawn to 4 inches every other week to allow for proper root growth and nutrition. This will allow wildflower species to bloom and provide nectar for pollinators and other beneficial insects.

03/08/2024

Overwintering insects need winter cover. Leave the hollow stems of late blooming perennials for beneficial invertebrates to use as a cozy home for winter. Rocks, sticks, piles of leaves, and other “messy” parts of the garden also provide habitat for beneficials that will be allies in our garden come spring. Save most garden cleanup until daytime temperatures consistently reach 50°F.

04/27/2021

SPRING FLOWERING BULBS ---

Do not remove the foliage from spring flowering bulbs (tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, etc.) until after the foliage has yellowed. Removing foliage before it yellows reduces food production and thus bulb size. Smaller bulbs mean smaller blooms or no blooms next year. If your plants failed to bloom this year and had lots of foliage, most likely they need to be dug up and divided.

For more tips like this, subscribe to our monthly Gardening Gazette newsletter for just $15/year. Visit the CCE Livingston County website for a subscription form.

03/26/2020

Shall we all plant a garden?

Americans were once urged to plant in every patch of available soil — and produced about 40 percent of the nation’s fresh vegetables.