Gardening Tips by Bob Beyfuss

A shrub is a woody plant that usually has multiple stems and is less than 15-feet tall. Trees generally have a single trunk. The woody stems of shrubs distinguish them from perennials which are fleshy and die back to the ground each year. Some shrubs act like perennials sometimes, such as butterfly bush, which dies back partially.

Shrubs may be deciduous or evergreen and are grown for flowers, fruit or color/texture. Many are used to hide foundations while others are grown by themselves away from the house.

Pests with six and then eight legs
It is 86 degrees outside with the dew point in the high 70s as I write this at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and sweat is dripping off my head. The forecast is for thunderstorms today and if it does rain, it will be the fourth straight Tuesday that has happened. At least the weekends have been dry, much to the delight of the horticulture businesses that depend so much on nice weekend weather. Please patronize our small, local business as much as possible as they struggle to recover from last year’s hurricane damage.

Raised Beds

Is it Safe to Garden this Year?

February thoughts

Looking Back
First of all, I want to wish all of you a very happy and healthy 2012. I know that for many of you, 2011 was not a good year due to the wrath of Tropical Storm Irene. Let us hope that nature will be kinder to us in 2012.

This is the time of year when we make promises to ourselves that we may or may not keep. Usually the promise revolves around some sort of health or life style change that we know will be good for us.

Care of Holiday Gift Plants

Holiday Gifts for Gardeners
This is a column I enjoy writing every year at this time. In fact it is pretty much the exact same column as last year! Holiday gift shopping may be a joy for some people but for others it is torture. Some of us are just not that good at picking out gifts that will be appreciated. Fortunately almost everyone has some interest in gardening so the following suggestions might make your task a bit easier this year.

’Tis the Burning Season
Burning wood has allowed humans to survive in places and during times that our early ancestors could not. Every time we fire up the wood stove or light a log in the fireplace we are repeating an ancient ritual. Wood fires provide a comfort and sense of well-being that cannot be explained in terms of modern science. Whether you cut and prepare your own firewood or buy it locally, you are utilizing a renewable resource that can last indefinitely. Properly managed, a 10-acre woodlot can yield about five full cords of wood a year, forever.

Just about everyone who writes a newspaper column aspires to be a popular writer and perhaps someday have the chance to appear in major media, reading our brilliant thoughts to a huge audience. Few columnists have been as successful or as famous as was Andy Rooney. He was also almost universally loved, despite his reputation as an old curmudgeon.