QuickTips Index

Plants that Can Cause Skin Irritations
Some plants can cause itchy rashes when touched. Poison ivy may come to mind, but many common garden plants are also skin irritants, for some people. Carrots, dill, iris and elephant ears are among the handful of plants to touch with caution.

Leafminer Damage to Plants Leaves
If your plant leaves look like someone was doodling squiggly lines, you have leaf miners. Leafminers are the larvae of various beetles, flies, moths and sawflies. The adult lays their eggs on the leaf and the larvae burrow into the leaf and tunnel through it, feeding and leaving a transparent trail of where they've been. Although leafminers don't often kill a plant, they can make it pretty unsightly. Here are some tips for avoiding or stopping leafminer damage.

How to Prune a Hybrid Tea Rose
Hybrid tea roses aren't quite as fussy as their reputation would have you believe, but they do require some maintenance. Pruning hybrid tea roses will help keep them healthy and productive. Follow these easy steps to keep your hybrid tea blooming.

Satish M. Prabhu, M.D., Contributing Writer
Bio of contributing writer, Satish M. Prabhu, M.D.

Planting Summer Bulbs
Summer flowering bulbs need to be replanted each spring, once the ground warms. Caring for summer blooming bulbs is very easy and they will reward you with color and texture all summer long.

Companion Plants for Tomatoes
Companion planting for tomatoes can improve the tomatoes growth and flavor and repel insects and diseases. Choosing companion plants for your tomatoes should be easy because companion plants for tomatoes include many of these popular garden vegetables.

When Should You Feed Spring Blooming Bulbs?
When should you feed the spring blooming bulbs you planted last fall? Most everyone agrees that feeding spring flowering bulbs when they are first planted is a good way to start them off right. After that, agreement breaks down. Some experts recommend top dressing spring bulbs in the fall, others say to feed first thing in the spring. Here's some bottom line help with when to feed your bulbs.

Fall Garden Mums. Hardy or No?
Mums are everywhere in the fall and they make a tempting impulse buy when in full bloom. Many gardeners do not realize mums are hardy perennials. Maybe you’ve purchased mums labeled ‘hardy’ only to be disappointed the following spring when they didn’t survive. The key to a truly hardy mum is selecting the right variety and giving it time to establish itself in your garden, before winter comes. Here’s a quick tip to helping your garden mums survive the winter.

Growing Wildflowers & Native Plants
It’s such a treat to stumble on a patch of wildflowers. But how many of us every think of planting wildflowers in our gardens? Choosing wildflowers native to your area is smart in two ways: It will cut down on maintenance, since the plants are well adapted to your growing conditions and it prevents the heartache of tossing out a mixture of wildflower seeds that make more promises than they keep. Here’s an online tool to help you find wildflowers and native plants suitable for your garden.

Staking Plants in the Garden Doesn't Have to Look Ugly or Contrived
Staking tall plants in the garden is a battle of the practical versus the aesthetic. Here's a novel and colorful idea for homemade garden stakes to add some whimsy to your flower or vegetable gardens.

The Money Garden
Starting a home vegetable garden can be a great way to save money. Home grown vegetables cost a fraction of what you would pay in a grocery store. By choosing vegetables that are easy to grow, you’ll have fresh vegetable flavor and save money.

Pest Control in the Vegetable Garden
Another organic control has been added to the vegetable gardener’s arsenal with new studies that show adding worm compost can cut down on damage by sucking and chewing insects like aphids, caterpillars and mealy bugs.

Interplanting Flowers and Herbs in the Vegetable Garden
There is no rule that says vegetables and flowers can’t mix. In fact, the vegetable garden will benefit greatly from the addition of some flowers and herbs. It’s not just aesthetics that make flowers and herbs welcome in the vegetable garden. Interplanting flowers and herbs offers several beneficial features that can protect your vegetables from insect pests and even make them more productive.

Help Growing Potatoes Organically
Growing potatoes requires a lot of faith. You can’t see what’s happening underground until it’s too late to do anything about it. And what’s above ground is often a magnet for all kinds of vegetable garden pests. If you never want to see another Colorado potato beetle, you might want to give ‘King Harry’ a look. ‘King Harry’ has hairy leaves that repel most common potato pests. Now you can grow potatoes organically without carrying a jar of soapy water into the potato patch with you.

Watering Deeply
Every gardener has heard the term "water deeply". It's better to water deeply once a week than to water shallowly more often. What does it mean to water deeply and how can you tell if you've accomplished it? Here's a simple test.

Dividing Perennials - An Easier Way to Untangle Roots before Dividing Plants
Dividing perennials is a necessary chore. You'll want to stress the plant as little as possible, so if your perennial plant is a mass of tangled roots when you lift it, here's a method of untangling the roots that's less stressful on the plant as well as you.

Paperwhites - Using Alcohol to Keep Paperwhites from Falling Over
A problem when growing paperwhites is that they grow quite tall and top heavy and can fall over. Researchers in the Flowerbulb Research Program at Cornell University have come up with an unusual solution to this problem: Alcohol. When paperwhite bulbs are grown in a dilute solution of alcohol, the plants don't grow as tall as they normally would - but the flowers remain normal size and last just as long. Why they thought of giving their paperwhites a nip, I don’t know.

Ripening Green Tomatoes
There are always green tomatoes left on the vine in the fall. Deciding whether to pick green tomatoes is a tough call. And then there’s the problem of how to get green tomatoes to ripen. Here are some tips to keep your tomato plants healthy into the fall season and for getting those green tomatoes to ripen on the vine or how to salvage the obstinate green tomatoes you actually have to pick while still green.

Plant Row Covers
Row Covers, sometimes referred to as Floating Row Covers, are lightweight spun bonded synthetic fabrics that are laid over plants for protection against pests and temperatures. They are light enough to rest on the plants and allow light, water and even fertilizer to get through. Here’s what to look for.

Determining Lighting for Houseplants
Determining how much light an indoor plant needs is about as vague as determining how much water it needs. However, most houseplants don’t like to be placed in the direct sun of a windowsill. Strong sunlight may actually burn their leaves.

Used Tea Leaves Make Great Soil
We all know coffee grinds are good for plants, but you can use your tea leaves in the garden too. Tea leaves contain nutrients to help plants grow.

Keeping Cats Off of Newly Planted Seeds
Cats love to dig and newly planted seed beds are soft and inviting to cats. Here's a tip for keeping cats off your newly sown seed.

Planting Carrot Seeds
Carrots take a long time to germinate and the tiny carrot seeds need loose soil to be able to break through and grow. Here's a tip for planting carrot seeds successfully.

Testing Old Seeds - How to Test if Older Seed is Still Good
Do you need to throw away seeds from last year? That depends. Here's an easy way to test old seed, to see if it will still grow.

What Can’t I Plant Under a Black Walnut Tree?
Black walnuts (Juglans nigra L.)are valuable landscape and lumber trees, but black walnut trees are not always good companions for other plants. They produce a chemical called "juglone", which can be allelopathic to many common plants. Here are some tips for gardening near a black walnut tree.