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6 days ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
Iridescent gold and shiny emerald green, this critter may look beautiful in the sun, but it can easily do a lot of damage to your garden. The Japanese beetle is an invasive species with a giant appetite. Currently, the insect is still in its larval stage in the soil. If you dig into the ground, you might see the telltale C-shaped grubs, waiting to mature and become full beetles. When they emerge, they'll be hungry, and your garden is the closest salad bar.
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1 week ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
While your garden and raised bed may be humming along and growing just fine, there are still some issues that can pop up. Charlie Nardozzi answers a slew of listeners' questions about veggie plant and tree troubles, as well as what to do to eradicate various garden pests. Lilacs look brown and burned Q: My lilac bush developed a strange issue last fall where the leaves appeared brown and burnt.
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2 weeks ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
With a super soggy May in the rearview, your garden might need some extra TLC. Certain plants, trees and shrubs are susceptible to too much water. With these techniques, your gardens and landscape will be on the upswing and can thrive for the rest of the season. Vegetable plants, like tomatoes, and shrubs like lilac and some cherry and other fruit trees might be showing signs of damage from the wet spring. Plus, even any newly replanted seedlings may need a helping hand.
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3 weeks ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
A number of years ago, a listener sent a note to Charlie, letting him know she was having some success growing peanuts in Vermont. The listener even sent along some seeds so he could plant the crop in his backyard garden. After some experimentation — and failures, thanks to hungry mice — Charlie came up with a system that does, indeed, work for growing peanuts in our region.
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1 month ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
Sometimes pests can pester your pepper plant. Or perhaps your hibiscus or hydrangea seem lifeless. Or maybe your tomato seedling is scrawny. Should you keep it, compost it or cut it? In certain common gardening scenarios, it can be hard to know which direction to go. Charlie Nardozzi runs through a few gardening quandaries and provides the proper path to take for each. Keep it, compost it or cut it? Gardening scenario #1: Cutworms cut off my pepper stem, but the remaining stem is still green.
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1 month ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
Warmer temperatures this week, plus rain forecast for next week provides perfect conditions for your garden to really take off. And along with growing plants, flowers, trees and shrubs come questions. The All Things Gardening inbox is full of queries about a variety of garden-related topics, and Charlie Nardozzi answers a few of them:What's the best soil and compost for raised beds? Q: I will be planting flowers and vegetables in two, 12" x 48" raised beds.
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1 month ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
Perennial flowers like Siberian irises may already hold a special place in your gardens and landscape. But there's another flower in the iris family that you might consider adding for its color and movement, especially if you've got some soggy spots in your yard. It's the Japanese iris. The perennial Japanese iris, or Iris ensata, blooms later in the season, in June or early July, after the Siberian irises and other flowering perennials have come and gone.
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1 month ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
Spring's wetter and warmer weather encourages garden growth, of course, but those conditions also make weeds flourish. Now is the time to remove them, lest they grow, well, like weeds. The key to successful weed removal lies in knowing which kind of weeds you have, because removal techniques vary. So, refrain from just ripping out weeds and identify them before you begin.
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2 months ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
When you visit your favorite garden center this time of year, you'll see annual flowers that come in all different colors. If you plan to add flowering plants to window boxes and containers, consider adding in some of the annuals that grow with colorful foliage, too!Certain foliage annuals can be great additions to pots and window boxes, but they'll also serve as colorful ground-cover plants.
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2 months ago | 
vermontpublic.org | Charlie Nardozzi |Mary Engisch
For millennia, Indigenous peoples have practiced what Western science terms "phenology." That is the deep knowledge of cyclic phenomena occurring in nature that helps inform planting, harvesting and gathering. Essentially, when certain things occur in nature — like tree frogs, known as "peepers," announcing their presence with a high-pitched "peep" sound — that provides a clue to do something in a garden or farm setting.
