Why I Oughta...

In the photo above you can see both of our Rhododendrons that flank the stoop out the back door of our family.  In April of last year, I showed the landscape plan that specified these two plants to be placed in the beds on either side of the rear stoop and then in June, I got around to actually planting them .  And they bloomed beautifully this Summer .  They're a really interesting plant/shrub because they have an almost tropical appearance but also are winter hardy here in Zone 5B.  They keep their leaves on all winter, but that doesn't mean they can't use a little bit of help in fighting off the harsh cold and ice. And that's where something called Wilt-Pruf comes in.  Wilt-Pruf is an Anti-transpirant.  That means it helps protect plants from drying out.  We bought the concentrate version and mixed up a batch to put on some of our plants/trees.  I sprayed our Weeping Cedar in the back .  And the little boxwoods that I added near the...

In our old garden back in Elmhurst, we had a couple of strawberry plants.  I put them in a giant pot (that came with our Ginko tree) and they came back year-after-year we lived there and bore fruit that we (sometimes) ate and other times were enjoyed by various critters.  Here's a photo showing one of the big fruits from 2013 .  Here's a look at one of that plants just about six years ago and  here's a sample harvest from 2012 .   Also, in 2015, I came across this Hula Berry plant which features strawberries that taste like pineapple.  I planted it, but then before we were able to harvest, we sold our house and moved out.   Fast forward to this year: I found this package of 10 bare root "June Bearing All Star" strawberry plants from M&G Holland.  They sat on my desk for a few weeks until recently when I had the two containers left over from planting the kids Earth Day trees .   I wanted to run a little b...

I picked up these Forever Bags from Menards a few weeks back.  They were one of those "Pay $4.00 and get a $4.00 rebate back" type of deals.  Due to the frequency of my trips to Menards, I usually take a flyer on these things because I can typically spend the rebates on something I actually want. The Forever Bags folks claim that these bags will extend the life of your produce by somehow removing the ethylene gas that gets produced.  Take a peek at those bananas above.  The one of the left was left out normally.  The two on the right were in the yellow bag. I was skeptical, but the proof is in the photo:  they actually work.  Do they keep your bananas perfect?  Nope.  But, might they extend them by a few days?   Seems that way.