Tip of the week If your petunias, impatiens, or other annuals are starting to look straggly and have few flowers, cut them back 6 to 8 inches after flowers have decreased to encourage compact growth and promote a second flowering. Also water and fertilize. It’s never to early to start planning for next year’s garden. […]
Community & Lifestyle
Posted inArts & Culture
W-e-e-d
Tip of the week To view the best free garden display in central Illinois, drive through the Illinois State Fairgrounds in the next couple of days. The other day I almost lost my one-year-old daughter–she had walked into the garden where the weeds were tall. I had to face up to the chore I’d put […]
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Bigger doesn’t mean better veggies
Most vegetable gardeners would agree with my four-year-old son: the most fun is planting the seeds and then eating the produce. We gardeners persevere through weeding, watering, and pest management, dreaming of our first tomato slice or the taste of fresh zucchini. One advantage of a home vegetable garden is that you can pick the […]
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King of the herbs
One of the highlights of July is garden-fresh tomatoes with olive oil and fresh basil. Basil is one of the easiest herbs to grow. The International Herb Association has declared it the herb of the year for 2003. Most basils that you use for cooking are cultivars of the species Ocimum basilicum, or sweet basil. […]
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Beauty for a day
While there is no perfect flowering perennial, the daylily comes close. Classified in the genus Hemerocallis, which in Greek means “beautiful for a day,” the plants may produce flowers for several weeks, but each flower lasts for only a single day. Daylilies are tough, long-lived plants. Tall orange daylilies are a familiar site along roadsides […]
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Still making the case for ethanol
For years ethanol has been touted as a homegrown solution to satisfy America’s unquenchable thirst for oil. It’s made from renewable sources–any substance with sufficient amounts of sugar, or material that can be converted into sugar, like the starch in corn. When burned, ethanol creates less pollution than gas. Every year nearly 2 billion gallons […]
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A beautiful day in the neighborhood
Last Saturday was a good day. In the morning I shopped it up at a neighborhood yard sale. I came home with a chinchilla stole ($4) to wear on Halloween, a vintage handmade felt Christmas stocking decorated profusely with sequins ($2), a yellow twig dogwood shrub ($5), and a handful of trinkets. I even found […]
