Tops on the list for growing high quality vegetables is adding a good compost to your garden each year. This is not just top soil, this is broken down organic material that is just waiting to stimulate the soil, feed your plants and even protect them from disease and pests. Compost takes about a year [...]

Another update to our garden. We are starting to do our summer harvest of tomatoes (pretty late as compared to other years due to a cool and wet June), artichokes, onions, beets, squash, beans, peppers, and eggplant. We have been picking strawberries throughout the year and they have been good. I highly recommend Albion strawberries [...]

There is a wonderful free service that Utah State Extention provides for those growing anything in their yard. It is the Plant Pest Advisories. You can subscribe to these advisories so that you will receive an email every week to alert you what you should be looking for in terms of pests and how to [...]

In a prior post I discussed very basic pest and disease practices to control your unwanted plant killers. In order to be effective while being environmentally friendly, most states use an integrated pest management (IPM) program. These are highly informative and very useful. You can even subscribe to the advisories so that you can be [...]

There is something important that you should do for those plants that go dormant over the winter, particularly fruit trees, berries, roses etc. Every year, during the “pink stage” (right before the tree is about to open buds), you will want to dormant spray to eliminate numerous problems for the trees. By spraying during this time you [...]

Anyone who gardens is very aware of all that there is to learn on the subject of pest and disease management. Even those who study this subject for a living find this a lifetime pursuit. This can be very discouraging for the backyard vegetable gardener who wants to grow plants and doesn’t have the time [...]