Dahlias have been showing off all summer, and if yours are anything like mine, they’re still going strong right now.…
If you’ve walked past a flower bed this week and spotted a cluster of pink or lavender blooms shooting straight…
If you moved your houseplants outside for the summer, congratulations, they probably look amazing right now. Bigger leaves, better color,…
If your bearded irises bloomed sparse and sad this past spring, or if the clump looks like a tangled mess…
If your crepe myrtle looked gorgeous in June and now looks like it got hosed down with motor oil, you’re not imagining it. That black, sooty film coating the leaves and dripping onto your patio furniture below is one of the most common July complaints about these trees, and it’s almost always the same culprit:…
If your kale looks like lace and your dahlias have gone from lush to lacy overnight, you’re probably not dealing with beetles or caterpillars. Late July is peak grasshopper season, and in dry, hot summers like this one, they show up in numbers that can strip a garden bed in a couple of days. They’re…
You water it, you harvest it, and somehow by mid-July your basil plant looks like it’s trying to become a Christmas tree — tall, woody, and topped with little white flower spikes instead of the tender leaves you actually wanted. That’s bolting, and it’s basil’s way of saying “I’m done growing leaves, I’m making seeds…
You watered it Tuesday. It looked fine Tuesday. Wednesday morning it’s a heap of yellow, wilted leaves lying flat on the ground like it gave up on life sometime overnight. If your squash or zucchini plant went from thriving to collapsed in the span of about twelve hours, put the fungicide down. This isn’t powdery…
You planted those hydrangeas for the blue or pink or white blooms, and now, right in the thick of July, they’re going… green? Not sickly green. Not \”something is wrong\” green. More like an antique, dusty, watercolor green that’s honestly kind of gorgeous once you stop panicking about it. This is usually just the flower…
You walk out to check on your zucchini and the leaves look like someone dusted them with flour. That’s powdery mildew, and if you’re growing squash, cucumbers, melons, or pumpkins in July, you’re going to meet it eventually. The good news: it’s rarely a death sentence for the whole plant right away. The bad news:…
