Once the cool season arrives, our opportunities to grow narrow significantly. Certain must haves for houseplants will help assuage your growing dreams and keep you content until spring planting time. As an added bonus, greenery inside the home helps clean the air, adds life, and is a great stress reducer. According to some gardeners, there are some must have indoor plants that will enliven the indoors and provide eye catching displays....

About Sunmaster Tomatoes Sunmaster tomato plants are resistant to various diseases, including fusarium wilt and verticillium wilt. They tend to be firm and blemish free. Be sure to install supportive stakes, cages or trellises at planting time. Sunmaster tomato plants are determinate, which means they are bushy plants that produce fruit for a generous harvest all at once. How to Grow Sunmasters Successful Sunmaster tomato plant care requires at least six to eight hours of sunlight per day....

About Chicory Issues Preventing problems with chicory starts with proper growing conditions and hardy plants. Healthy chicory plants are tougher and less likely to be bothered by various chicory issues. Be sure your chicory plants are planted in fertile, well-drained soil and that they are watered properly. The soil should be uniformly moist but never soggy. Chicory requires several hours of bright sunlight per day. However, keep in mind that chicory is a cool-season crop and won’t do well when temperatures rise in summer....

Year-Round Garden Planner Before beginning your garden, create a year-round garden planner where you can identify the plants that will bloom each season in your garden. A planner will not only help you keep track of what you have planted, but it will also allow you to add garden notes or other thoughts as well as pictures. How to Create a Four-Season Garden Designing year-round gardens simply begins with choosing appropriate plants for your region....

Caring for Allium Bulbs Allium plants produce big, round, softball-sized flowers in shades of purple. They last best in sunny but sheltered spots where the wind is less likely to blow the flowers apart. In these conditions, they bloom in early summer and tend to last for about three weeks. Once the flowers have faded, you can deadhead the blooms. Leave the foliage in place, though, as the leaves need time to fade naturally to gather energy into the bulbs for next season’s growth....

Determining which animals are the culprit and, more importantly, how to control them will be essential to a successful start to the garden season. Read on for tips on what to do about small animals eating seedlings in your garden. What Animal is Eating My Seedlings? While garden seeds are commonly eaten by mice, most seedlings are damaged by voles, chipmunks, rabbits, or squirrels. To determine the small animals eating seedlings in your own garden, it will be important to observe the area carefully....

How Is Anise Good for You? Anise, or aniseed, comes from the plant known as Pimpinella anisum. It is native to the Middle East, grows to about two feet (61 cm.) tall, and produces clusters of small white flowers. This should not be confused with star anise, Illicium verum, an evergreen tree native to China. The seeds of anise have long been used for their licorice flavor in food and drink, but there are also some health benefits....

What is an Aphid Midge? Aphid midges (Aphidoletes aphidimyza) are tiny flies with long, slender legs. They often stand with their antenna curled back over their head. Their larvae are bright orange and consume soft-bodied insect pests. Aphid midges consume about 60 different species of aphids, including those that attack vegetable crops, ornamentals, and fruit trees. Voracious feeders, aphid midges can be more effective at managing an aphid infestation than ladybugs and lacewings....

Apricots with Root Knot Nematodes Root knot nematodes of apricot penetrate roots with a sharp, spear-like mouth part and suck out the contents. When one cell has been depleted, the nematodes move on to new cells. Apricot nematode problems are often compounded because the damage caused by the nematodes creates an easy entry for many types of bacteria and fungi. Root knot nematodes of apricot aren’t visible above soil level, but when the pests feed on the roots, symptoms may show up as stunted growth, wilting, pale leaves, or twig dieback....

Ashmead’s Kernel Information When it comes to appearance, Ashmead’s Kernel apples aren’t impressive. In fact, these rather odd-looking apples are somewhat drab, tend to be lopsided, and are small to medium in size. The color is golden to greenish-brown with red highlights. The appearance of the apple, however, is unimportant when you consider that the distinctive flavor is crisp and juicy with a pleasant aroma and a flavor that is both sweet and tart....

What Causes Avocado Rot? Avocado wood rot is a fungal disease caused by the pathogen Ganoderma lucidum. Spores of this fungal disease are carried on the wind and infect avocado trees through open wounds on the trunk or roots. The spores can live in soil for quite some time and also be carried to root wounds by flooding or splash back of rain. Avocado rot is more prevalent in weakened or damaged trees....

Bald Cypress Information A bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) isn’t actually bald. Like every living tree, it grows foliage that helps it with photosynthesis. It’s a conifer, so its foliage consists of needles, not leaves. However, unlike many conifers, bald cypress is deciduous. That means that it loses its needles before winter. Bald cypress information suggests that the needles are flat and yellow-green in summer, turning rusty orange and falling in autumn....

Let’s learn more about adding this plant to your garden. Balloon Plants for Caterpillars Balloon plant milkweed is a unique, vase-shaped shrub that produces light green, lance-shaped leaves and clusters of small, waxy flowers that show up in summer. The blooms are followed by round, balloon-like fruit covered with small bristles. Balloon plant milkweed isn’t particularly showy, but butterflies love the nectar-rich blooms. In fact, the plant is definitely one of the best plants for attracting monarch butterflies....

Why Does Basil Wilt? Healthy basil plants require at least eight hours of sunlight every day, well-drained soil, and enough space to allow for plenty of air circulation. If you are meeting the plant’s basic needs and your basil plant keeps falling over anyway, there may be a more serious problem. Fusarium Wilt Basil plant droop that appears suddenly on young plants is often caused by fusarium wilt, a fungal disease that causes stunted growth and droopy, wilted, or yellow leaves....

American Bear Cone Plants The bear cone plant has an unusual life cycle. Its seeds sink into the ground near a tree in the red oak family. Unlike other plants, which immediately send up leaves to collect chlorophyll, the bear cone seed’s first order of business is to send down roots. These roots travel down until they make contact with the oak’s roots and they latch on. It is from these roots that the bear cone gathers all its nutrients....

Better Boy Tomato Info Better Boy is a midseason, hybrid tomato that is extremely popular. The plants easily adapt to a variety of conditions and reliably produce fruit with classic tomato flavor. They mature in about 70-75 days, which makes them an excellent choice for a variety of USDA zones. Better Boy tomatoes are resistant to both verticillium and fusarium wilt, a key to their popularity. Another good thing about growing Better Boy tomatoes is their dense foliage....

Growing Blackberries from Cuttings Blackberries can be propagated through leafy stem cuttings as well as root cuttings. If you want to propagate lots of plants, leafy stem cuttings are probably the best way to go. This is usually accomplished while the cane is still firm and succulent. You’ll want to take about 4-6 inches (10-15 cm.) of the cane stems. These should be placed in a moist peat/sand mix, sticking them in a couple inches deep....

Golden Star Wildflowers The golden star (Bloomeria crocea) is a bulbous diminutive plant at just 6 to 12 inches (15-31 cm.) that is native in southern California. Named after the botanist Dr. Hiram Green Bloomer, the golden star is a geophyte, which means it grows from buds on an underground bulb. From April through June, it produces clusters of bright yellow, star-shaped flowers along hillsides, coastal sage scrub, grassland and chaparral edges, and in dry flats, often in heavy clay soil....

Foliar Pest Damage on Blueberries There is a long list of blueberry insect pests that damage fruit, shoots, leaves, flowers, and roots. The list is so long, in fact, it is actually overwhelming. Oriental beetles attack roots, their damage is hard to see above ground and often deadly by the time you do see it. Other bugs on blueberry bushes are easier to see and, therefore, easier to control. The flea beetle bothers all sorts of plants....

Why Plant Vegetables in a 5-Gallon Bucket? You don’t need a huge backyard to grow food for your family. In fact, you don’t even need a backyard at all. More and more people are container planting vegetables and getting plenty of food. In addition to saving space, using buckets for gardens also helps with a lot of other common gardening problems like young plants getting trampled, rabbits eating plants, poor soil, hard rains, weeds, and ease of care....