Garden advice, tips & tricks for the home gardener

A yucca plant is finicky about it’s food and it’s location, plus the yucca usually rests a year between blooming cycles. Any or all of these reasons could be why your yucca plant won’t bloom.
Feeding a yucca plant with fertilizer that is high in nitrogen will cause the plant to produce new growth but no blooms. Feed the yucca plant with a fertilizer that contains the lowest amount of nitrogen.
Yucca plants like to be located in full sun and they thrive in warm weather. In colder, northern climates, a yucca will bloom best when the summer has been extraordinarily hot and dry.
Yucca plants also like to take every other year off from blooming. An older, established yucca, when located and fed properly, will reward you with tall stalks of blooms every other year.

In order for holly shrubs to produce those bright red berries, there must be male and female holly shrubs in close proximity to each other. Here’s a simple way to tell the difference between make and female holly shrubs so you be sure to plant both in your garden or landscape.
A close look at the flowers of the holly shrub will tell you if it’s a male or female. The flowers of the male holly shrub will have a straight stem and pin like formations called stamen. The stamen contain the pollen to pollinate the female holly.
The female holly flower has swollen base in the center of the flower that contains eggs that will become red holly berries if they are pollinated by the male holly.

This is a easy to make and very effective organic insecticide that is safe to use on all vegetables and flowers. To make organic insecticide with garlic, you will need the following: 1 head of garlic, water, blender, strainer and spray bottle.
Combine 1 head of peeled garlic and 2 cups of water in a blender and blend on high until the garlic is finely pureed. Pour the mixture into a covered container and allow it to set overnight.
The next day, pour the mixture through a strainer to remove all the garlic bits and add the mixture to 1 gallon of water. You now have an organic insecticide made with garlic.
Pour the organic insecticide in a spray bottle and use as needed on plants. Keep unused portion in a tightly sealed container.

Ants, bees and wasps want to get at the sugar water inside a hummingbird feeders as much as the hummingbirds do. Here are some simple tricks you can use to keep these unwanted pests away from hummingbird feeders.
To keep ants away from hummingbird feeders, place a piece of double sided sticky tape on the top of the feeders. The ants won’t walk across the sticky tape to get to the hummingbird feeder openings and drink the sugar water.
The bees and wasps are only after the moisture from the hummingbird feeder. Place a birdbath or other container of water within a foot of the hummingbird feeders and the bees, wasps and other flying, stinging insects will go to the easiest location to get their moisture.

While we love the beauty of the fall foliage, raking the fallen leaves are a different issue. If you will view the fallen leaves from the perspective of how they will help your garden produce more vegetables, raking the leaves may not be such a dreaded chore.
Fallen leaves are good for composting. Add they leaves you rake up to your existing compost pile or you can rake them up and pile them on your garden as is. The leaves placed directly onto a garden in fall won’t fully decompose by spring, but they will form leaf mold, which also adds nutrients to your garden. Just till the leaves into the garden soil in the spring.
If you need and want the fallen leaves to decompose quickly, rake the leaves up in a long row and run your lawn mower over them, then rake the smaller pieces up and place in your compost pile or on your garden.

In the south, we pickle everything, including watermelon rind. The only drawback to pickling watermelon rind is when the entire watermelon is not eaten in one sitting and you need to save the watermelon rind over the course of a few days.
To save the watermelon rind for pickling under these circumstances, just wrap the watermelon rind in tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate until you have enough rind to start the pickling process. Wrap the rind air tight and it will keep for up to one week in your refrigerator.
Do not freeze the watermelon rind. The water content in the rind will form ice crystals and ruin the rid for pickling.

Peeling a tomato may seem harder than herding a bunch of cats into a tow sack, but it’s not, if you know a trick or two.
To easily and successfully peel a tomato, you will need a pot of boiling water and a bowl of ice water.
Bring a pot of water to a full boil, then turn off the heat. Cut a small X into the bottom of the tomato. Place the tomato on a slotted spoon and dip into the boiling water for 30 seconds, keeping the tomato on the slotted spoon.
At the end of 30 seconds, lift the tomato out of the boiling water and immediately plunge the tomato into the ice water for 30 seconds.
Now you’re ready to peel the tomato. Start at the X you cut on the bottom of the tomato, place your paring knife under one corner of the X and lift. 1/4 of the tomato peel will easily release, then continue in this manner on the 3 remaining corners of the X and you’ll have a cleanly peeled tomato.

Sounds simple enough; pick up the houseplant pot and bring it indoors. There’s a little more to it than that, if you want your houseplant to live through the winter indoors.
If you have kept your houseplant outdoors during the summer, to suddenly bring it indoors and changes it’s climate will shock the houseplant, often causing the plant to drop all it’s leaves.
Temper your houseplants to avoid shock by bringing them only at night for a couple of weeks when the temperatures begin to drop, but still remain above 55 degrees. Set the houseplants back outdoors during the daytime, but for less and less time each day.
This adjustment period from outdoors to indoors should keep your houseplants thriving all winter.

October is a great time to dig new flower beds or vegetable garden plots for next year. If you plow or till up the ground now, it will destroy weed roots and destroy weed seeds before they can germinate.
Add plenty of organic matter to the soil like compost or well rotted cow manure when you dig up the garden beds and leave the soil rough so it will have good drainage throughout the winter months.
Plant a cover crop like rye grass or clover on the newly tilled garden beds to prevent soil erosion and turn it into the soil next spring as green manure.

Many pests that attack garden vegetables and fruit trees during the spring and summer months over-winter in the debris that is left in the garden or under fruit trees. A fall clean-up of these areas will remove the pest’s winter hibernation home and help prevent a pest infestation.
Cucumber beetles, squash bugs, corn borers, etc., make their winter homes in garden debris, weeds and mulch that remain in gardens or around fruit trees through the winter. Clean-up spent vegetable plants by removing them from the garden or plowing them under in the garden. Rake all debris like rotting fruit, fruit tree twigs and last season’s mulch out from under fruit trees so pest’s won’t have a welcoming environment to over-winter in.