If you spy a fly buzzing around your garden and sipping nectar from your plants, you should probably give him or her a tiny high five. You owe a surprisingly big thank you to that little guy. If it’s lapping nectar from a flower, there’s a very good chance that fly is a tachinid fly, which is the world’s largest and most important group of parasitoidal flies. Yes, that means that tiny fly is a big-time helper to you and your garden. Let me introduce the two of you – I’m sure you’ll be best buds before you know it.
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Build a pollinator palace for your garden
You’ve likely heard of insect hotels, but what about a pollinator palace? At the 2017 RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London, England, in the Great Pavilion, I encountered this very unique structure for pollinators, artistically assembled, though a little wilder looking. Conceived by garden designer John Cullen of John Cullen Gardens, gabions filled with layers of live plant material and items found in nature were placed among a regular garden with trees, flowers, and groundcover.
The daylily: A perfect perennial for the summer garden
A daylily is perhaps the perfect perennial. It thrives in full sun to partial shade, grows happily in a range of soil conditions, is resistant to most pests and diseases, is drought-tolerant, and blooms for weeks each summer. Plus, there are thousands of varieties to choose from in a dazzling assortment of flower sizes, shapes, and colors.
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Shasta Daisy: Growing tips, varieties, and pollinator power
Though I love my vegetable garden, as a horticulturist my first “plant love” was perennials. I spent ten years in my early career tending 35 different perennial gardens in and around the city of Pittsburgh. That’s where I developed a great appreciation for these wonderful plants. Seeing them return to those gardens year after year, bigger and better than the season before, was a great confidence booster, especially for a young gardener. Perennials are among the most reliable and low-maintenance plants, and if you mix and match the right selections, you’ll have a beautiful show of blooms all season long. Among my most favorite perennials is the Shasta daisy, a hardy, rabbit- and deer-resistant perennial with a long bloom time and very few pest troubles.
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When to harvest garlic (and garlic scapes!) and how to store it for the winter
One vegetable I have not had to purchase in several years is garlic. Every fall, without fail, I place an order. I like to try different varieties, so I split a bigger order with a couple of other green thumbs and then divvy it up. I think one of the best things about growing garlic is you get two harvests! But a key thing to note if you’re new to growing it, is when to harvest garlic—and those delicious garlic scapes that come sooner in the season.
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The best tomatoes for containers and 7 strategies for growing them in pots
Tomatoes are the most popular vegetable grown in gardens, but even small or no-space gardeners can enjoy a harvest of homegrown tomatoes when they plant in containers. Tomatoes are a vegetable that thrives when grown in pots and you can help ensure success when you pick the best varieties for containers and pair them with my seven strategies for growing a bumper crop of delicious tomatoes in pots.
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