When cutting flowers, don’t remove more than half of the blooms and make sure to leave enough stem (with at least 3 or 4 leaves) on the plant. Hint: Remove dead blooms in spring/early summer but wait to cut peony bushes to the ground until after the first frost. For longer lasting...
Gray squirrels are active during the day, expecting to hear them during the daytime. Can inhabit the attic areas as well as crawl spaces. They like to enter the attic areas from your gutters and nearby trees and bushes. Installing gutter guards or downspouts with the screen may prevent them...
Pruning shrubs is not like taking a hedge trimmer to the bushes in the front yard. Dealing with a densely branched plant can be intimidating, but if you take your time and use the proper tools and cuts, you’ll get the job done. There are several pruning cuts you’ll need to be awar...
Look for branches that cross one another, and cut the branch that will best open that area of the shrub. Each year for the first 3 years that Althea has been planted, cut the shrub down by 1/3. You can continue to cut off 1/3 of althea each subsequent spring, or allow it to gro...
The bright yellow flowers of the forsythia bush are one of the earliest blooms of spring, adding cheerful color to the still-sleepy landscape. Learn all about planting, growing, and caring for forsythia! About Forsythia Bushes Forsythia are deciduous, fast-growing, adaptable shrubs known for their...
To improve the flowering of lilacs, keep the grass from growing around them. A 16- to 24-inch circle of landscape cloth placed around the bushes and covered with bark or stone will keep the grass down. Force a winter bouquet from cut branches of lilac. Bruise the cut ends and set them...
The leaves are smooth-edged, oblong, and oval-shaped with gently pointed ends. The leaves are bright green during the growing season and emit a spicy aroma when crushed. In fall, the spicebush leaves turn bright yellow foran appealing autumn display. ...
25. Remove High-Maintenance Plants, Trees, and Bushes I’m so not a gardener. So at a couple of our houses, I’ve had to remove a few plants that were just too much for me to maintain. We replaced them with lower maintenance, but still lovely to look at options. ...
You can propagate hardy kiwi from both softwood and hardwood cuttings, but softwood cuttings root more easily. Start by making softwood cuttings any time in the late spring or summer. Use a sharp and sanitizedpair of pruning shearsto remove a cutting of this year’s growth, then cut each sh...
Some years, when the rains have been plentiful and the nights cool,you can bite into a guava and not find many seeds. The guava bushes grow closeto the ground, their branches laden with green then yellow fruit that seem toripe overnight. These guavas are large and juicy, almost seedless...