Water your plants like a pro! Discover essential watering techniques for healthy growth, from proper timing to watering methods.
The small dark spots scattered across your grass are almost certainly helminthosporium leaf spot, a fungal lawn disease that looks worse than it usually is. For most home lawns the spotted-blade phase is cosmetic and fades with a few weeks…
Your lawn looks thirsty in the same spots every summer, no matter how much you water. You have raised the sprinkler run time, fed it, even replaced the sod once, and the thin patches come back in exactly the same…
Walk the lawn at sunrise and look for straw-colored circles the size of a silver dollar before the dew dries. That is dollar spot, a leaf fungus that shows up on hungry lawns in wet weather. The rest of this…
You wake up after two days of rain, look out at the lawn, and there it is: a lumpy yellow blob up to 8 inches across sitting on grass that was clean yesterday. It looks like scrambled eggs. Or, less…
Those red dots on your photinia leaves are almost certainly Entomosporium leaf spot, and the honest news is that most cases look worse than they are. Light infections are cosmetic. Severe ones defoliate shrubs and demand a real plan. This…
Those tan spots with dark rings on your beet leaves have a name: Phoma leaf spot, caused by the seed-borne fungus Phoma betae. The spots run 1 to 2 centimeters across, and the same fungus rots seedlings at the soil…
Buy one pot-grown alstroemeria and slide the whole root ball into the ground without breaking it apart. That is how to grow alstroemeria that keeps blooming year after year. The rest of this page is 14 moves, from the pot…
Your lawn has thin, yellow patches that ignore water and fertilizer. A single cup of infested soil can hold 1,000 of them, each thinner than a human hair. You have ruled out grubs, you have ruled out fungus, and the…
Growing a dracaena means matching the right species to your room. Give Dracaena marginata (dragon tree) bright indirect light and fluoride-free water and it reaches up to 1.8 meters indoors. Give Dracaena fragrans (corn plant) the same treatment plus a…
Brown spots about a quarter inch across, ringed in purple or black, on your boxwood or hydrangea leaves are most likely Phyllosticta leaf spot. Here is the honest news first: on established shrubs this fungal disease is cosmetic, and a…
Gray spots about a quarter inch across on your St. Augustine grass are usually gray leaf spot, a fungal disease that explodes when daytime temperatures sit between 80 and 90 F with humid nights above 65 F. The short version…
You can keep Rhizoctonia out of your seedlings and transplants, but you cannot sterilize your garden against it. That is the honest starting point. The fungus behind rhizoctonia root rot survives for more than 3 years in soil as tiny…
Conquer Waterlogged Woes with Raised Garden Magic! Ever gazed upon your beloved garden, only to find it transformed into a swampy mess? Do your dreams of thriving veggies and vibrant blooms drown in pools of despair? Fear not, fellow planters!…
