Garden Fundamentals

Garden Fundamentals

Row Cover Fabric Equals Protection for Your Plants

A row cover protects garden plants from cold, wind, excess sun, and insects. Discover how to use a row cover in your garden to extend the growing season.

Garden Fundamentals

First and Last Frost Dates

Make it easier to plan your garden by looking at these estimates of the first and last frost dates for your region of the country.

Garden Fundamentals

Find Your Garden Planting Zone

Knowing your garden planting zone (aka hardiness zone) can help you determine the best times and varieties to plant. Find your zone with this USDA map.

Garden Fundamentals

How to Create a Compost Pile

Any plant material is prime for composting. Whether you choose a compost bin, compost pile, or other composting method, composting is a great way to recycle kitchen and garden waste. Plus, nutrient-rich compost is great for your garden.

Garden Fundamentals

Why You Should Keep Your Compost Pile Moist

You may be surprised to learn that your compost pile needs just as much water as your live plants. Dry compost doesn’t work. There are several ways to ensure your compost is getting the adequate amount of water needed to do its job.

Garden Fundamentals

Leafrollers on Strawberries

Green to grayish brown, half-inch long caterpillars that roll up in the leaves in silk webbing and feed on leaves. A clean garden is the best prevention.

Garden Fundamentals

Squash Vine Borer

An entire plant or a single runner may wilt in as little as a day when borers are present. Look for a hole in the stem with sawdust-like waste. Cut open the stem, and you may find a grub-like insect inside. Once the squash vine borer creates the tunnel-like wound, bacteria and other microbes can invade the plant and cause rotting.

Garden Fundamentals

Squash Bugs

These insects emerge in spring after wintering under plant debris. They feed on leaves, vines, and fruit.

Garden Fundamentals

Squash Beetles

Often found on squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, and melons, these pests typically don’t cause enough damage to hurt plants. These are often confused with Mexican Bean Beetle.

Garden Fundamentals

Spider Mites

Leaves turn yellow and dry up. Tiny webbing stretches from one leaf to another, appearing first on undersides but in severe cases across leaf surfaces, too.

Garden Fundamentals

Pickleworms

These caterpillars burrow into fruit, where they feed.

Garden Fundamentals

Mexican Bean Beetles

With beans, the most likely cause of leaf blemishes is Mexican bean beetles. The larvae eat the tender tissue between leaf veins, creating brown spots and eventually skeletonized leaves.

Garden Fundamentals

Japanese Beetles

You may be familiar with Japanese beetles as a problem for roses and lawns, but these beetles can also feed on your vegetable plants. Corn, asparagus, and rhubarb are especially at risk.

Garden Fundamentals

Hornworms

These large, green caterpillars have a horn on their backside. They can devour an entire tomato plant in a day or two.

Garden Fundamentals

Flea Beetles

These tiny beetles jump like a flea. They typically create shot hole-like damage on leaves.

Garden Fundamentals

European Corn Borer

When these borers are present, you’ll see broken stalks, sawdust castings at entry holes, or broken tassels. They also burrow into the base of ears.

Garden Fundamentals

How to Prevent and Get Rid of Cucumber Beetles

Cucumber beetles feed directly on plants, causing visible damage, and they may carry a bacterium that causes leaves to wilt. Infection typically occurs when plants are half-grown.

Garden Fundamentals

Corn Earworms

These caterpillars bore into fruit, especially corn. Damage to beans is usually minimal.

Garden Fundamentals

Colorado Potato Beetle

These voracious beetles strip the foliage of potato, tomato, pepper, and eggplant crops. Adults have bright yellow wings with black stripes.

Garden Fundamentals

Cabbageworms, Cabbage Loopers, and Cross-Striped Cabbageworms

Cabbageworms are velvety green caterpillars that are 1 to 2 inches long.. White butterflies fluttering around your cole crops are the first sign of these munchers -- they are laying eggs that hatch into tiny cabbageworms that do more damage as they grow. Cabbage loopers are thin, green, inchworm-like caterpillars, also about 1 to 2 inches long. They often appear at the same time as the cabbageworm. The cross-striped cabbageworm is easy to identify by the blue-gray and black stripes across its back. All three pests chew holes in the leaves.

Garden Fundamentals

Army Worms

Tiny larvae crawl like inchworms, eating leaves to fuel growth. They vary in shades of yellow, green, gray, and brown.

Garden Fundamentals

Aphids

Hundreds of tiny insects, varying in color, appear on stems, buds, young fruit, undersides of leaves, and between leaves. Aphids cause some damage to plants by their feeding, but they can also transmit viruses to plants.