If you’re just getting in to gardening, you may think mulch is simply a way to make a garden bed look orderly and neat. While this is certainly a great benefit of mulching your beds, the real reasons are far greater for your plants than they are for the aesthetics of your garden. Besides the clean look mulch gives your garden, here are three very good reasons to incorporate mulch into your garden beds.
Read more Mulch Matters: 3 Very Good Reasons to Mulch Your Beds

If you want to add a touch of homegrown heat to your summertime recipes, here’s a list of our favorite peppers to grow in a home garden. For best results, peppers should be started indoors, about eight to ten weeks prior to last frost. However, most types of peppers are quick to grow and begin to produce fruits, so as long as you have eight to twelve weeks before cool weather rolls into town, you can grow your own hot peppers outdoors with little to no issues. Peppers are lovers of the sun, so be sure to plant them in an area that receives at least six to ten hours of direct sun per day. As your pepper plants begin to blossom, pinch off early growth to produce a higher yield and larger peppers.
Read more 8 Essential Peppers for Summer Gardens

Deer: KEEP OUT!
If Bambi likes to chow down on your vegetable plants and maybe strip your rose buds before they open, here’s great news.

Years ago, the second spring after I had just created a new garden with expensive rose bushes and a big vegetable patch, it happened. Deer arrived very early one morning, and had a great feast eating all my young vegetables and stripping all the tender buds from my roses. Of course, I had heard of deer damage for years, but it had never happened to me. They even ate my emerging clematis vines right to the ground, and when that happens, they never come up until the following spring. If deer (or rabbits) are hungry, tender new growth is their favorite meal.

Read more Gardeners’ Best-Kept Secret on How to Make Your Whole Garden Deer-Resistant

Many of us know lettuce as the versatile leafy green used as a base for salads, a topping for sandwiches, and an occasional edible garnish. It’s mild crunch makes it the perfect companion for many dishes, and often adds a textural zing which enhances equal and opposite flavors and textures. Lettuce is grown on a worldwide scale on farms and in gardens of all sizes. The history of this leafy green can be traced all the ways back to Ancient Egypt, and was even described as a medicinal herb in some ancient texts. Changes in growing, packing, and storing procedures have allowed us to enjoy the fresh crisp of lettuce for longer periods of time, and have allowed it to be shipped over longer distances.

Read more What Should I Plant with My Lettuce?

First, save money and order lots of glads during our Winter Advance Sale.  Then after frosts, plant the glads in successive weeks for at least a month, some each week.  Result:  Flowers to enjoy or cut for over two months in summer. Imagine the arrangements!

Read more How to trick your Glads into four times the bloom.