The GRO Big Red Gardening Show helps you plan your pollinator garden!
Author: grobigred
National Pollinator Week: Soldier Beetles
What a happy combination—soldier beetles and butter daisies! The soldier beetle, Chauliognathus spp., is a ½ inch long insect that gets its name from its wing covers, which resemble a uniform. It may remind you of the lighting bug, and rightly so, since they are related. Both the larvae and adults of soldier beetles feed…
Plant a Miniature Garden for the Wee Folk!
A miniature garden is fun to put together and does not require a large investment of money. Whether your preferred wee folk are fairies, gnomes or elves, it’s a great recycling effort to use things you’d throw out, find in the yard and score from garage sales. Rule number 1 is there’s a good…
The Paradoxical Echinacea
You’re probably familiar with the purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea. It’s a beautiful native plant that is often plagued with an incurable disease known as aster yellows. If you’re fed up with digging out and discarding your purple coneflowers for this reason, try its cousin, the Ozark coneflower, Echinacea paradoxa. The “paradox” owes to the flower…
Ornamental Onion, Allium christophii
Nothing beats the “wow!” power of the ornamental onions for sheer showiness. Pollinators would agree because ornamental onions are magnets for bees, bumble bees and butterflies! Allium christophii, sometimes called Star of Persia, has 1 inch star-like metallic purple flowers, combined into one large cluster 6 inches across. This ornamental onion has 18 inch…
Growing Requirements for Selected Culinary Herbs
All herbs grow best where they receive 6 or more hours of uninterrupted sunlight daily. Amend heavy clay soils with compost to provide a deep, loamy soil suitable for good plant growth. One inch of water per week, precipitation and irrigation combined, is best. Basil This is an annual plant easily grown from seed. …
How to ID and Manage Japanese Beetles
Download a PDF of this Blog Post Fast Facts Japanese beetles are non-native, invasive pests that damage over 400 different types of plants by feeding on leaves, flowers, and fruits. Feeding on leaves results in lacey, doily-like leaves, flower feeding results in shredded flowers, and fruit can be hollowed out Adults are 1/2 an inch…