Garden maintenance

Whew! Finally got the backyard flowerbed replanted!

I’ve been working on this whenever I get a chance, which hasn’t been often enough, since I’m also finishing our basement this spring; today I finally finished planting all the new flowers in our long backyard flowerbed, after a lot of weeding, giving away plants I don’t want anymore (or tossing some that became like […]

“Oiled” my fruit trees and roses last Saturday

I “oiled” my fruit trees and some of my roses last Saturday. By “oiled” I mean that I sprayed dormant oil all over the trunks and branches to kill overwintering insect eggs and things. I believe it kills some diseases, too, like fungal spores. The oil I used was Volck Oil Spray from Ortho. It’s […]

Pruning Ruby Meidiland roses

I posted a message in the GardenWeb roses forum about how to prune my Ruby Meidiland roses. I’ve been cutting the canes back to 18″ or so at the end of each winter, but I thought I’d read somewhere that they do well with little or no pruning. Here’s the best answer: Ruby Meidiland belongs […]

Late winter/early spring pruning advice

A friend asked a question on a forum about what I’m pruning these days, and I thought I’d share the answer here. This is based on what I have in my yard: It’s good to prune any shrubs now EXCEPT those that are spring flowering shrubs. Things like forsythia, flowering cherry, or others that will […]