People Garden

 Butterfly weed growing tips and butterfly weed varieties Gardeners who want to see butterflies in their gardens will plant Asclepias tuberosa (Asclepias tuberosa) for its yellow, orange, and red flowers and its green, narrow leaves from late spring to late summer. Native to the entire Midwest, across eastern North America, and the southern Rocky Mountains, butterfly weed grows in medium to dry grasslands and other open areas on gravelly or sandy soils. Some strains grow in clay, although most prefer well-drained soil. This perennial attracts pollinators and offers the desirable features of deer resistance and low maintenance. If you're lucky, monarch butterflies will find your plants and lay eggs on the leaves. The caterpillars (larvae) hatch and the developing larvae eat the leaves. After about two weeks, the fully developed caterpillar attaches itself to the plant and begins the metamorphosis process to become a chrysalis, from which the Monarch butterfly emerges. T...

Get rid of wireworms in potatoes Do Potatoes and Carrots Have Wireworms? Here's how to remove them. If you see small, dry, round holes in your tubers, look more closely and you may be spotting potato wireworms. Wireworms can cause significant damage to a garden, but they are particularly attracted to potatoes, carrots, and corn. How can you tell if you have wireworms? What to do if you find them? For that matter, what are they? Glad you asked! What are wireworms? Wireworms are the larvae of click beetles. There are several types of wireworms, but for our purposes, there isn't much difference in how we approach the problem. The entire life cycle of a wireworm is 2 to 6 years. One reason they survive so long is that most of their lives are spent in the larval stage, underground. In fact, wireworms can burrow two feet or more into the ground in winter. Older wireworms are up to an inch long, hard, yellow to rusty in color. Although adult click beetles won't damage...

 4 Gardening "Hacks"  Gardening seems to attract two types of people. There are people who are really good at it. They are prepared to do the work by learning about plants, their soil, and growing techniques. There are people who love the look of a garden but want an easy, no-nonsense way to get the end results. While there are plenty of good gardening hacks, there are also bad ones. That's why we talked to an expert about the most popular gardening hacks that don't actually work. To preface, some myths are rooted in truth According to Grove Co's Alex Wojenski, it's not all in our heads. There are plenty of garden myths out there, and Wojenski says many have some truth to them, which is why it's so tricky to separate plant truth from fiction. While some hacks may not work, problems arise when they are harmful. If something seems too easy or too overwhelming, it's worth doing more research before using it in your garden. Lucky for us, Wozen...

Gardening hack keeps weeds at bay  Hobbies are beautiful, but even better is a hobby you can share with someone you love—and for me, that's always been gardening with my dad. Every summer, I would watch him load big bales of dirt into a wheelbarrow and go to the small garden patch he had plowed alone in our backyard. One day, I decided to go out with him, and the habit stuck. From diligently pruning tomatoes to harvesting large zucchini, we tend the garden together all summer long. Since I had to enjoy the sunshine in the summer and not have to pull weeds all day, my dad taught me a foolproof method of keeping weeds at bay: using landscaping cloth, or weed paper as he called it. How does weed cloth work? Weed paper serves as ground cover, and this particular version is made of heavy-duty woven polypropylene. This material promotes plant and root growth, reduces soil erosion, and prevents weeds from appearing because they are suppressed by the paper and the sun cannot r...

 how to plant zinnia seeds You can count on this favorite garden flower to come back next year. But are zinnias perennial? Here's the scoop. Wondering if zinnias are perennials that don't require repotting next year? There are actually several varieties of these colorful flowers, all in the Zinnia genus, including perennials and annuals. However, the most popular for gardens is the common or elegant zinnia (Zinnia elegans). It has been extensively bred and hybridized to produce hundreds of dazzling varieties to choose from. These plants are annuals, but some perennial zinnias deserve a place in your garden. Perennial zinnias Some zinnias native to the American Southwest are perennials, the best known being Zinnia grandiflora, which goes by many common names such as plains zinnia or Rocky Mountain zinnia. This type of zinnia is hardy in USDA zones 4-9 and is not unlike its better-known annual cousin. Plains Zinnia is a low-mounding plant with pale yellow single flow...

Discover how to ripen tomatoes quickly As summer begins to wane, you may have a few growing tomato plants left when early frost warnings begin before you settle into long winter hibernation. If they look like mine, they probably aren't pretty; A little disease begins to develop, and the leaves begin to change according to the season, but still ... the tomato lives. Once cooled, they no longer change color (or at least not quickly), and you need to know how to ripen tomatoes quickly so you can get to your lunch. You can still find yourself in this predicament at the start of summer, maybe you need a tomato basil mozzarella salad and all your 'maters are halfway through. However, there are several ways to complete them quickly. How to make tomatoes ripen faster with ethylene The two methods below use ethylene as a magic ripening agent, and for good reason – it works! When fruits like bananas, apples, and tomatoes ripen, they release a gas called ethylene, which cause...