Last week’s poll which asked whether you use Epsom salt in your garden was almost evenly split. I guess that means there are a lot of great gardens out there without the help of Epsom salt, but hey, it doesn’t hurt.

Gardening Tip of the Week

Rain is great for plants, but you have to be careful what you do in the garden when the soil and plants are wet. Don’t prune when plants are wet. Water helps spread many diseases. Don’t walk on water soaked soil or you will compact it and ruin its texture.Do take advantage of damp soil for weeding. Unless you have excessive clay, weeds pull out easier from water softened soil. And if you don’t mind a light drizzle, it’s a wonderful time to put in new plants. They hardly notice the transplant shock at all.

In the Spotlight

Time to Clean and Sharpen Your Hand Pruners There are few tools we rely on more than our hand pruners, but most of us don’t really take very good care of them. Keeping your hand pruners clean…read more               More Topics    Calling for Your Photos! What’s Being Recycled in Your Garden? Controlling Beetles From the tree & shrub expert. Herbs for Pots Inside or out. What the Heck is Humus? No, not the kind made from chick peas. Garden Design -Working with Color More is just more. Buying the Farm? Things to consider before you do. A - Z Plants   Plant of the Week: Onions! Yes, onions. Where would we be without onions to cook with? There’s no substitution. And still onions get very little respect. Probably because they go about their business and ask very little from the gardener. The biggest request an onion will demand of you is the patience to let it finish growing. It’s even courteous enough to poke its head above ground to signal it’s just about time to harvest. Onions are also one of those crops whose fresh picked flavor cannot be found in the produce aisle. Pick a corner of your vegetable garden to devote to growing onions. You could even tuck them into the flower beds. The deer won’t touch them…read more     Planting a Hedge While we have our pruners out this spring, it’s a good time to take a look at those shrubs we planted to give ourselves some privacy. Personally, I like the look of a mixed shrub border, with some evergreens, some spring flowering shrubs and some fall color. But if you’d like a more formal look or year round privacy, you probably want a hedge. Hedges don’t just happen. You can’t plant some evergreens tightly together and assume they’ll form a wall. They take a little training and a bit of patience. David Beaulieu, over at About Landscaping, has been there and done that. He’ll give us the skinny on what shrubs work well as formal or informal hedges and how to achieve the look we’re after in Selecting Suitable Shrubs to Make Hedges…read more

Gardening Question of the Week

How Do You Keep Containers from Staining the Patio? Here’s another common complaint that really hasn’t been solved yet. Paul wrote: “I am looking for some assistance with a container issue I am having. There are several plant containers that either sit directly on my concrete patio or on stands above the patio. All of them leave a brown stain on the concrete after watering and I cannot find anything to remove the stain. Can you recommend anything to eliminate the planted pots from staining or anything to remove the stain? Is there some way to flush all of the pots so that they will not drain brown water or am I crazy? Thanks.”  I tend to clean everything with bleach, but there must be other solutions? Let us know what you clean with or what kind of “feet” you put under your pots to keep them from resting on the patio surface. Thanks for your help.