The time has arrived to announce the winners of our “What a Cool Photo!” contest! We received tons of great photos, and we want to thank you all for participating.
After much deliberation and determination, we are happy to announce the winner of the best “critter” photo is none other than…Tara Back! Her up close shot of a busy bee won us over.
Great photo, Tara!
The other winner was picked by YOU! The taker of the photo with the most “likes” (and positive comments) is none other than…Michele Fitts Barnaby! Her funny chicken photo won the hearts of the fans:
Congratulations to both of you! You have each won free $25 Gift Certificate to Gurney’s Seed & Nursery! We will also notify the winners privately so they can claim their prizes.
Our next photo contest will be held from August 9th – August 16th, so get ready…the topic is “Kids in the Garden!”
The prize will be a FREE $100 Gift Certificate to Gurney’s Seed & Nursery! Just in time for Fall Shipping!
It’s midsummer. The heat is scorching and the gardens are alive with color! There’s still plenty to do in the garden, and your friends at Gurney’s are always here to help. In fact, because we love you, we just released a ton of new summer gardening videos over on our YouTube channel!
Hosted by Felix, our leading horticultural expert, the new videos cover a wide range of helpful topics, including fruit thinning, pruning, fruit production, planting and care tips, and new exclusive product announcements.
Below is one of our new videos! Felix shares how to thin fruit on an a mature apple tree. Fruit thinning is the process of removing extra fruit from tree branches to benefit the tree’s health and vigor. Make sure you check back often for more videos, or bookmark our channel!
Pawpaw trees are an interesting specimen, and one of my favorites. The trees grow 15-30 ft. tall, and their foliage is a dark, deep green. The fruit is similar to bananas, but mushier and with a bolder flavor. But unlike banana trees, pawpaw trees don’t have to be grown in a warm or tropical climate. We grow pawpaw trees here in Ohio in both full sun and full shade, and they perform quite well each year.
Most people have never heard of pawpaws. This is likely due to the fact that, while pawpaw trees are easy to grow, pawpaw fruit is very tender and does not stay ripe for very long after being picked. That’s why you wont see pawpaw fruit at the grocery store. All the more reason to grow pawpaw trees in your backyard! You can impress your friends and neighbors with this exotic fruit at parties and get togethers.
This video is an up-close look at pawpaw fruit. Felix, our horticultural expert, demonstrates how to cut and serve pawpaw fruit. He even shares a recipe for pawpaw ice cream! If you’re interested in growing your very own pawpaw tree, click here for a great deal.
Few things trigger pleasant memories like a handful of plump, juicy strawberries. Their appeal doesn’t stop with taste, though. A perennial garden favorite, strawberries also offer pretty white flowers and unique foliage, making them perfect as a ground cover. They’re affordable, too; a well-maintained strawberry patch offers harvests year after year at very little cost.
Two varieties of strawberries are readily available to the home gardener: everbearing and Junebearing. Everbearing strawberry plants produce two crops the first year they’re planted; the first crop of each year matures in late spring and is followed by a second, smaller, crop in the fall (plus a few fruits in between). These strawberries are typically snack-sized berries, and the plants do not produce as many runners. If you’re looking for an everbearing, I recommend Ozark Beauty.
Junebearing strawberries are planted in the fall, and produce one large harvest in late spring or early summer the following year. Although they need more time to mature than everbearers, Junebearers produce larger fruit that is superior in taste and color. Jam-making gardeners love them because the plants set all their fruit at once. Note: You can plant Junebearing varieties in the spring and the plants will produce a few flowers. You should remove all flowers before they fruit, however; it is more important that Junebearers focus on growing larger as plants instead of producing fruit during the first year. If you’re interested in planting a Junebearing strawberry plant, I recommend Gurney’s Whopper Junebearing Strawberry and Jewel Junebearing Strawberry.
In the next part of our Strawberry Fields Forever series, I’ll talk about how to grow and cultivate your strawberry crops, so stay tuned!
Sweet, juicy and easy to grow, nothing says “summer” like a ripe melon!
On a hot summer day, few things quench your thirst and inspire fond memories like feasting on a slice of succulent red watermelon. Try growing watermelon, cantaloupe, or honeydew melon, and you can relive those wonderful memories and at the same time spare your wallet and your taste buds from bland, expensive supermarket produce.
Here are a few tips on how to grow some great melons:
A sun-loving crop, melons need protection from cool spring and fall winds, proper air circulation, and space, whether it’s up a sturdy lean-to trellis or spread out in a 4’ by 4’ area. Melons prefer light, sandy, loamy oil that’s packed full of organic matter and nutrients. Cantaloupes and other melons require a pH of 6-7.5, but watermelons can take a pH as low as 5.5. A warm-weather crop, melons prefer soil temperatures of at least 70°F and ambient air temperatures of 50-55°F. If this sounds too warm for gardeners in cooler climates, don’t worry: There are other compact cool-season cultivars that will grow just fine.
We have started a new series here at Gurney’s Blog called “The Minimalist Garden.” Each month, we will discuss ways you can simplify and organize different aspects of your garden! Today’s entry: Herbs!
In terms of grower satisfaction, it’s hard to beat herbs. If you have limited time and space, herbs give you more for less than anything else you can grow. Just one or two leaves of the right herb can completely transform a salad, pasta dish or stew. Best of all, they are easy to grow and immune to most pests.
The compact growth of most herbs makes them ideal for containers, too. A few nursery pots, 18-24” across the top, will provide a happy home for your herbs. In a colder climate, you can bring the pots indoors to a sunny spot.
Choose as many herbs as you will actually use and have room for. Make sure you sort them into two groups, annuals and perennials. Common annuals include basil, dill and parsley. Common perennials include chives, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, sorrel and thyme. Whether you grow herbs in beds or in pots, keep your perennials separate from your annuals so they can continue to grow year after year without being disturbed.
Most herbs will grow well from seed, but transplants are just as easy to grow. With transplants, make sure the soil or growing medium you’re putting the plants into is well-watered (moist but not soggy) in advance. Drainage is important – few plants like wet feet – so augment your soil with perlite, vermiculite or compost.
If you start herbs from seed, wait until the seedlings have their first true leaves (leaves that resemble those of an adult plant), then thin them so they stand several inches apart. Do this by snipping off the unwanted plants at ground level with scissors – don’t pull them out, which can injure the roots of the surviving plants.
So that’s it for Part I of Herbs. Stay tuned for the next post, where we discuss some of my favorite herbs…
I love picking asparagus straight from the garden and eating it fresh. It’s one of the best reminders of spring turning to summer. Asparagus is a perennial vegetable that can produce annual springtime harvests for up to 20 years, following an initial three-year period while the bed gets established after planting. It’s a popular vegetable, so I’m sure many of you are growing it in your gardens. That’s why I’ve come up with some general facts and care tips about asparagus:
First and foremost, asparagus is a hungry plant. Keep it well fed and it will remain happy. This is the basic maintenance requirement, along with mulching and weeding. A slow-release fertilizer will work great, adding nutrients as needed; apply it in the spring and again after harvest.
Also, you’ll want to check the makeup of your fertilizer to be sure your asparagus gets plenty of phosphorus and potassium. You can provide those nutrients by adding bonemeal and wood ash to the soil. Pellet fertilizers are fine, but make sure you combine them with organic matter. A top dressing of these materials after harvest and in the fall will help ensure good growth. Asparagus grows best in a sandy loam with a pH between 6.0 and 7.0.
After harvest and through the fall, leave the plant alone. Let them just do what asparaguses (asparagi?) do naturally! If your asparagus turns yellow, don’t worry, that’s normal. Even as it yellows, the foliage is still feeding the plant, so don’t cut it back until it totally dies back. At that point, usually in early winter, remove all remaining foliage. This will protect your plant from pests and disease.
And speaking of pests, the most common asparagus pest is the appropriately named “asparagus beetle.” Cutting the foliage back in the winter should keep the buggers away, but if not, you can always pick them off and drop them in soapy water to kill them.
That about covers asparagus care. Just remember the best protection against pests and disease is to keep your plants healthy and strong through feeding, weeding and mulching!
Maybe you’ve always wanted to grow an apple tree but didn’t think you had enough space in your yard or garden. Or maybe you weren’t interested in climbing a ladder to pick your own deliciously sweet apples or prune hard-to-reach tree branches.
Get to know Gurney’s® Li’l Big Pixie Crunch Apple Tree—the sweetest and most crisp apple you’ll ever taste. At just 6 feet tall with a 6- to 8-foot spread, it’s startling how much fruit our customers harvest from their Li’l Big Pixie Crunch apple trees. Don’t be fooled by the tree’s diminutive size—it bears more than a half-bushel of full-size fruit in late summer. Its complex breeding at Purdue University is responsible for the other reasons you’ll love Pixie Crunch: Think unparalleled sweetness; fine, crisp texture; and excellent disease resistance.
Little and Big at the Same Time, Fruits in 18 Months
The small stature of Gurney’s Li’l Big Trees is due to the genetic traits of the rootstock we use, which induces early flowering and causes the tree to go through its juvenile period much more quickly than standard-size fruit trees. The result is full-size fruit in just 18 months—compared to 5 or 6 years for standard-size trees. The early and heavy fruiting keeps the tree small and easy to care for—perfect for smaller spaces. Li’l Big’s small size makes picking fruit a breeze and simplifies pruning and spraying.
Check out this video we did on Li’l Big Apple Trees:
It’s Earth Day, 2010, tomorrow! If you’re as excited as me, you probably want run out and plant something right now, such as a tree, a shrub or maybe even some fruit. How about a Blueberry Plant?
In this video, Felix from Gurney’s talks about blueberry plants and how to grow them in a container. You’ll want to use a large container, such as a whiskey barrel. This Ka-Bluey blueberry plant is only 3 years old and produced 5 – 6 quarts of blueberries in its second year! If you only have a patio or if your soil type is too alkaline, growing your blueberry plant in a container is the way to go.
Beneficial insects are invaluable in the home garden. They kill the bad bugs by eating them or parasitizing them, and increase flower production and crop yields by providing the valuable service of pollination. Luckily, attracting beneficial insects is easy. Provide a habitat they’ll like, avoid using chemical pesticides and attract and keep them around with all-natural, easy-to-use products.
Take a close look in your garden, and you may find that you already have a few species of beneficial insects calling your garden home. These may include lady beetles, green lacewings, hover flies, parasitic wasps and predatory mites. The predators, such as lady beetles, lacewing larvae and mites, prey on aphids, caterpillars, mealybugs, leafhoppers, whiteflies and insect eggs. The parasites, such as wasps, defend your garden against tomato hornworm, cabbageworm and tent caterpillars by laying their eggs on or into them.
Your friends at Gurney’s have the perfect solution for attracting beneficial insects to your garden: Gurney’s Beneficial Bug Blend! This superior blend of flowers and herbs has been specially formulated to attract beneficial insects to your garden. Irresistible to good bugs such as ladybugs and lacewings, which work to eliminate pests that do damage to plants and crops – also attractive to pollinators such as honeybees and butterflies.
