Starting Seeds with Success: Best Practices

As we edge closer to spring it is time to start getting ready for the active growing season.   Many gardeners kick off their gardening year early with indoor seed starting to prepare for the upcoming season.

Starting your own seeds is an excellent, and often economical way to prepare for your year of gardening. Whether you grow vegetables or flowers (or both), starting from seeds can offer many benefits. Of course, there are some dos and don’ts for getting the most mileage from your seed starting endeavors.… Continue reading this article “Starting Seeds with Success: Best Practices”

What’s in YOUR honey? It may not be the nectar you expected.

This month’s National Geographic has a brief article from an ongoing study of the DNA profiles of urban honey. While we can all observe honeybees visiting flowers in our own gardens, until recently we could only assume what nectar they were collecting for honey production. This tantalizing snippet completely blew me away.

The study, undertaken by an entomologist who founded the Urban Beekeeping Laboratory and Bee Sanctuary, is sampling urban hives from major cities, including Boston, Portland (OR), New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.… Continue reading this article “What’s in YOUR honey? It may not be the nectar you expected.”

Howdy and Previous Post Revisited 1.0

Greetings all, and good to be back in the saddle for the Garden Professors.  It’s been a while since I’ve filled you in on my own personal gardening struggles (lots) and triumphs (few) as well as topics I think you’d be interested in.  I’ve always appreciated the kind comments and good questions our readers pose, in response to my off-kilter posts and horrific punctuation.

I’m sure there is one BURNING question that long-time readers have:

“So how’s your Puya doing?”… Continue reading this article “Howdy and Previous Post Revisited 1.0”

Translating the Language of Seed Packets: Hybrid, Heirloom, non-GMO, and more

Hybrid, heirloom, organic, non-GMO, natural….there’s lots of labels on those seed packets or plants you pick up at the garden center or from your favorite catalog.  Since the seed-starting season is upon us, let’s take a minute to look at some of the information – and mis-information – you might find on those seed packets.

For a brief overview, here’s a short video segment I recently shot for the Backyard Farmer Show, a popular public TV offering for Nebraska Extension:

Hybrid vs.… Continue reading this article “Translating the Language of Seed Packets: Hybrid, Heirloom, non-GMO, and more”

NON-GMO FERTILIZER?

I was asked by Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott to look up some information in order to answer a recent comment and question on a previous post.

Paraphrased, the question is, “… are there any verifiable “organic” fertilizers that can be guaranteed to be made from 100 percent non-GMO sources.”

First off, let me state up front that the whole “Non-GMO” labeling effort is pure marketing. There is no evidence to suggest products that come from genetically engineered crops are any different than crops made from other plant breeding methods.… Continue reading this article “NON-GMO FERTILIZER?”

Our New Year’s Resolution – to keep you informed and entertained every week.

Happy New Year!

The Garden Professor’s collective resolution is to have at least one new blog post a week for 2018. So I’m kicking things off with a little fact checking on the claims made for a product that’s “a complete ecosystem in a bottle.” The company touts its strong connection to science (“our products revolve around biology”). There is a long list of ingredients and claims – way too much for one post. We’ll start with the first four this week.… Continue reading this article “Our New Year’s Resolution – to keep you informed and entertained every week.”

“Mulch Murder” Misinformation

This weekend I received a link to a Maryland gardening column with the intriguing title “Murder by Mulch.” My correspondent was concerned that her planned use of arborist wood chip mulch was going to cause problems. I assured her that it would not – but then spent some time looking at the column and putting it through CRAP analysis (credibility, relevance, accuracy, and purpose). It’s a skill that I encourage everyone – not just gardeners – to develop.… Continue reading this article ““Mulch Murder” Misinformation”

Rhymes with nārang

By Visiting Professors Dr. Charlie Rohwer and Ulrike Carlson

I’ve had this dream of doing a full academic etymological study of oranges, with the help of a second-cousin-by-marriage linguist and her historian husband. Being honest with myself, I know that’ll never happen. And also, honestly, they’d have to do all the work anyway.

But, the Garden Professor’s Facebook post about the citrus family tree revived my interest. Not for a full-blown academic analysis of the word ‘orange,’ but for a blog-friendly, factual, interesting post.… Continue reading this article “Rhymes with nārang”

Worst Gardening Advice – Video category

Here at the Garden Professors we try to focus on sharing the best applied plant and soil science information for gardens and landscapes. But sometimes we get sidetracked by information that is SO bad that we need to share it too. So the purpose of this occasional feature – Worst Gardening Advice – is not to poke fun, but to point out the real hazards to plants, people, and the environment by following scientifically unsound practices.… Continue reading this article “Worst Gardening Advice – Video category”

Dowsing for dollars

Recently I was at the Northwest Flower and Garden show and spoke to a gardener who was excited about some new information from his garden club meeting. Their speaker was a dowser – who promotes dowse gardening.

Now this was a new concept for me. I’ve heard of dowsing, of course, in the context of finding underground water. But dowse gardening?

Fortunately, my gardening friend shared his handout with me. I did a little Internet sleuthing and found the author, whose goal was to combine her two interests: dowsing and gardening.… Continue reading this article “Dowsing for dollars”